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THOUGHTS ON SEXUAL TEACHING AND EDUCA- 
TION PROPOSED TO CLERGYMEN, PARENTS 
AND OTHER EDUCATORS 

BY 

fir, £Udf*tl <$*lltrt* f &.$. 

Professor of Theology at the University of Innsbruck 
AND 

Of the Theological Faculty of the Same Institution 

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE THIRD GERMAN 

EDITION, ADAPTED AND SUPPLEMENTED WITH 

AN EXTENSIVE APPENDIX 

BY 

REV. C. VAN DER DONCKT 



WITH ECCLESIASTICAL APPROBATION 



Printers to The Holy Apostolic See and The Sacred 
Congregation of Rites 



RATISBON ROME NEW YORK CINCINNATI 

1912 



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F. J. BECKMAN 



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+HENRICUS MOELLER 

Archiepiscopus Cincinnatensis. 



Feb. 24, 1912. 



Copyright, 1912 
FR. PUSTET & CO. 

NEW YORK AND CINCINNATI 



«£C!.A3 1GS48 




While the first edition of this book was limited, 
the second, amounting to three thousand copies, 
was sold out in a few months. The authors re- 
ceived numerous appreciations from educators, 
among whom not a few expressed their regret that 
they had not likewise been enlightened in their 
youth, as they would thus have been spared many 
errors and much anxiety. Grant, Virgin most 
pure, that this little book may not harm any one! 
May it lift many to a higher conception of sexual 
matters, and to a greater and more enlightened 
conscientiousness regarding purity! 

Innsbruck, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1910. 




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HILE f/iere ts no£ in ^e United 
States so general a movement on 
foot for sexual enlightenment as in 
Europe, our medical journals and 
congresses of physicians have strongly urged 
it. An international campaign against im- 
morality and sexual diseases was organized 
over twenty years ago. Meetings were held 
at Stockholm, in 1890, at Brussels, in 1899, 
1902, etc. 1 

Besides, in February, 1905, was founded the 
American Society of Sanitary and Moral 
Prophylaxis, whose president, Prince A. Mor- 
row, of New York, asserted that two hundred 
thousand venereally infected persons daily walk 
the streets of his home city. Aware of the appal- 
ling extent of this huge evil, the leading practi- 
tioners of that organization fervently advocate a 
general enlightenment of the public. Let us 

1 See Appendix. 
[6] 



xanxUUx'* Extinct 



all hope and pray that their eloquent exhorta- 
tions in behalf of the millions of this prosperous 
commonwealth may not prove voices crying in 
the wilderness. 

We suppose that, in answer to the earnest 
appeals of European and, American physicians, 
a thorough educational campaign regarding 
venereal diseases, their dreadful nature, and the 
facility of contagious infection, has been going 
on for years. If, after its close, at a Coney 
Island festivity, or at a presidential inaugura- 
tion, tongues of flame should suddenly flash 
above the heads of all the men and women who 
are diseased for having burnt with the unholy 
fire of lust or having even unawares come in con- 
tact with such, a pandemonium would ensue, 
compared to which the commotion that swayed 
the myriads in the streets of Jerusalem on the 
first Christian Pentecost would be like the report 
of a toy pistol-shot contrasted with the deafening 
roar of a cannon. Or, if in the middle of a 
popular theatrical play at a packed auditorium 
of a metropolis the Almighty instantaneously 
compelled the stricken votaries of Venus and 
their guilty or innocent victims to shout "un- 
clean," somewhat as the Mosaic law bound 

[7] 



Sfrattfflrthir** ^rt(a<t 



the lepers of old to do, a panic and stamped* 
would result among clean people, involving a 
catastrophe exceeding the horrors of the ill-fated 
Iroquois theater. 

Both in the Old and the Xeie Testament God 
Himself stooped to man's frailly by moving 
him to keep His commandments through motives 
of fear as well as of lore. Yet, owing to the 
frequency of temptation and the weakness of 
human nature, just because the hereafter seems 
so far away that even those who amply deserrc 
hell-fire hope to hare time to make amends, 
so as to escape it, — the prospects of future 
rewards and punishments are poirerless to keep 
all earth J s denizens on the path of rirtue. To 
scare both the wayward and the vacillating into 
self-restraint and to prevent the innocent from 
bringing upon themselves lifelong wretchedness 
through momentary folly, it will, we sincerely 
hope, prove helpful to tear the dazzling glamour 
from lechery, by bidding especially the young 
and inexperienceed gaze upon the impending 
scourges, the loathsome sores, ulcers, and leprosy- 
like decay which, however painful and ostraciz- 
ing, are but the glaring fraction of the crop of 
evils that spring up in the wake of vice. They 

[8] 



i§Tan®lal®t'& Ijkxcitttt 



that sow in their flesh, of the flesh also shall 
reap corruption (Gal. vi. 8) — disease in them- 
selves, their consorts, and their children, degen- 
erate tastes and inclinations in themselves and 
in their offspring. Such is the inspired word 
of God, which shall be fulfilled though heaven 
and earth pass away. Yes, as the Bible says, 
By what things a man sinneth, by the same also 
he is tormented. (Wis. xi. 17.) 

May this warning prove as efficacious to 
keep men from haunts of vice as the yellow 
flag frightens them from the contagion of small- 
pox! 




[9] 



Should our readers take the unwarrantable 
liberty of setting down as guiding principles 
isolated sentences of this booklet, while disre- 
garding its general tenor, we disclaim all ac- 
countability for their mistakes. 

As children cannot be trained to purity, unless 
they receive at the same time a sound many- 
sided education, we urge parents and tutors to 
study pedagogical works. 1 And we crave special 
attention for the numerous useful hints on peda- 

1 Alban Stolz's " Erziehungskunst " (" Art of Education," B. 
Herder) still deserves the first place. They also who have 
not studied pedagogy will greatly profit by perusing this 
volume. Others well versed in that science should not 
content themselves with the usual textbooks; but they 
should study, besides the standard work just mentioned, the 
excellent old Catholic writings on education, e.g., " Christian 
Education," composed by Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, at the 
request of St. Charles Borromeo; also Mapheus Vegius's 
"Treatise on Education" and John Louis Vives's "Educa- 
tional Writings." Herder's "Library of Catholic Pedagogy" 
(sixteen vols.) has rescued from oblivion many pearls of 
Catholic educational wisdom of the past ages. Theorizers 
would have been saved a great deal of unnecessary labor and 
blunders had they dealt more kindly with this old heritage. 

[10] 



gogy which we shall throw out in the course of 
our treatise. 

Possibly this book will impress some as not 
doing full justice to its subject. There is 
indeed much room for additions. But our main 
purpose is to publish our solution of the hard 
problem of the so-called sexual enlightenment 
and to assist in smoothing the educator's way by 
practical directions. Such helps, on the other 
handy which Christian tutors can easily know 
and adopt will be briefly pointed out in the 
proper place, e.g., books and pamphlets which 
sound the praises of purity and arouse enthusi- 
asm for this virtue by bringing forward living 
examples apt to complete our short treatment of 
the motives for leading clean lives (p. 1±2). 

Occasional repetitions designedly occur, as 
experience teaches that important principles 
must be stated more than once in their various 
applications until all their bearings are thor- 
oughly digested and assimilated. 




[11] 



^nbex, xtt ¥*£*« 300-310 




I? 



1. What stand does this book take with re- 
gard to the vexed problem of sexual enlighten- 
ment — we would fain avoid this catchword, 
1 1 Sexual Enlightenment ' ' — implying, as it 
does, senseless and harmful exaggerations 
which earnest educators abhor. 

Still we must not fall into the opposite 
extreme: so paramount and extensive a sub- 
ject, as the sexual question is, clamors for 
treatment; for it is a matter which concerns 
the deepest interests of young and old, which 
wields the greatest influence on man's heart 
and on his whole character, on which depends 
the temporal and eternal happiness of the 
bulk of mankind 1 as well as the weal or woe 
of the coming generations, and which per- 
manently affects all standards of morality; to 

1 According to St. Alphonsus impurity is either wholly 
or partly to blame for most people's damnation. 

[13] 



^btualing hi ^t$rit^ 



ignore or dismiss with a few empty sentences 
a question so vital to plastic youths would be 
leaving them without instruction and guidance 
in one of the most dangerous provinces of life; 
depriving them to some extent of the light of 
Christian instruction, which should nowhere 
fail, especially not in this slippery field where 
it alone is a safe guide. To keep silence here 
would be to abandon the young to the teach- 
ing of sensualists, who speak to them with a 
thousand tongues by word and deed, as well 
as through the press, on the street, in many a 
school, and even in their very homes. Do not 
the Bible, the Apostles, and the Holy Fathers, 
those masters of Christian education, speak 
on sexual matters with a most remarkable 
freedom, straightforwardness, and directness? 
Witness the passage we shall quote from a 
homily of St. John Chrysostom (pp. 17, 18). 

We must perforce instruct, definitely warn, 
and prudently direct youth with regard to 
sexual matters. To fail to educate youth 
along this line would be just as fatal a blun- 
der as to leave it in ignorance concerning 
other questions of vital moment and pitfalls 
that beset its path. 

[14] 



m^t tMv&l ^twpVTtani 



2. Still this view, however reasonable it 
must appear to a wise educator, meets with 
contradiction. Why? Chiefly, as it appears 
to us, because of the difficulties encountered 
in carrying it out. 

It is precisely these obstacles our booklet 
will assist in brushing aside. The essential 
though difficult requisites which educators 
must have, successfully to impart this instruc- 
tion, are chiefly the proper expressions and 
the right spirit. In default of these, explana- 
tions of sexual matters might prove a stum- 
bling-block. 

Most educators find it almost impossible to 
clothe this necessary sexual teaching in a 
garb suitable to children. In fact, daily 
experience shows how helpless language is 
even for adults when, e.gr., medical advice 
about such matters becomes imperative. 
Therefore, we shall endeavor to supply the 
terms which may safely be used before young 
folk. This alone however is not sufficient. 
A wholesome effect cannot be looked for 
unless they who teach be animated by the 
right spirit. An instruction couched in the 
fittest language will fail to uplift if it betray 

[15] 



^SturaHmj to ^JairUg 



a frivolous mental attitude. But the same 
information coming from a father or a mother, 
who is convinced of the importance of sexual 
enlightenment, and filled both with yearning 
for the child's happiness and with the fear 
of God, will be altogether salutary. Ingenu- 
ousness and simplicity must underlie the in- 
struction, but something more is necessary. 
Above all, there must be a holy earnestness 
and a kind of consecration which springs 
from the high, moral-religious conception of 
things sexual. In default of these qualities 
the enlightenment of the young frequently 
fails of the wished-for effect, and it provokes 
the hostility of intelligent and solicitous edu- 
cators. They either lack the right and lofty 
views of sexual matters, or the great Chris- 
tian conception thereof has not penetrated 
their flesh and blood. 

We cannot, of course, expect to meet with 
such an elevated view in those pedagogues 
whom even the non-Catholic liberal Professor 
Paulsen styles "a choir of inebriates/ ' But 
how often, alas! do we hear from Christian 
educators remarks and allusions anent things 
sexual which, while not foolish, are neverthe- 

[16] 



less full of levity, and which can be traced 
only to an underrating of this Divine ordi- 
nance. All those who realize what it means 
to bring into existence a being destined to 
live forever, and thus to place before him the 
alternative of eternal bliss or suffering, aye, 
positively to influence by parental action his 
all-important decision for eternity; yes, they 
who see in the duties and rights of marriage 
the loftiness and holiness attached thereto, 
which Christ exalted to the sacramental 
dignity of Christian wedlock — all those will 
welcome these necessary explanatory words as 
earnest, holy, and salutary instructions, and 
as a necessary preparation for matrimony. 

What lies at the bottom of a wrong and 
unchristian conception of the sexual life? We 
call special attention to three causes: 

(A) St. John Chrysostom in commenting 
on the Biblical phrase, "They shall be two in 
one flesh/' l speaks very freely of the parental 
or marital relations and of their great signifi- 
cance and sacredness. Upon noticing some of 
his hearers blushing, he wound up thus: "I 
see that some of you turn red at my remarks. 

1 Twelfth Homily on St. Paul's Epistle to Colossians. 
[17] 



TE&ntating l& ^nrit^ 



Whence is this? Did I discuss things of 
which we should be ashamed? Certainly not. 
What I said is pure and holy. ' Let marriage 
be honorable in all things, and the bed unde- 
fined/ (Heb. xiii. 4.) Such is St. Paul's lan- 
guage. That some are ashamed of it is to be 
traced to impurity." So does this holy Doc- 
tor of the Church point out the first cause why 
sexual matters are not viewed in the right 
spirit, namely, the prevailing impurity and 
the strong inclination thereto. Whoso would 
consider things sexual in the right spirit must 
live chastely and must earnestly have com- 
bated and curbed that inclination. Then he 
becomes fit to grasp the real meaning of sex 
matters; then he beholds, free from blinding 
concupiscence, as with a new eye, in the law- 
ful sexual relations a participation in the 
creative action of God. On these relations 
depend existence or non-existence, the weal 
or the woe of eternally living beings. For the 
right-minded the often thoughtlessly spoken 
sentence: "The family is the germ of human 
society/' is not an empty phrase, as all such 
vividly realize the awful import of the marital 
relations for the existence of the human fam- 

[18] 



ily, or to use a thoroughly Christian expres- 
sion, for the existence of the kingdom of God. 

(B) A second cause of the wrong view of 
sexual matters is the imprudent silence of 
many heralds and defenders of Christian 
truth, who partly or altogether steer clear of 
one of the most vital questions, marriage and 
purity, and who leave this subject to sensual- 
ists, instead of frequently and emphatically 
showing forth with becoming tact the signifi- 
cance and the loftiness of the sexual life. 

(C) A third cause is prudery, w T hich affects 
an invincible horror of words quite proper or 
even commanded regarding things sexual. 

Needless to say that the sense of shame 
regarding this matter, that spontaneous 
shrinking from whatever is ignominious in 
sexual disorders should be highly prized and 
carefully cultivated, as it is for fallen man an 
efficacious safeguard against sexual aberra- 
tions. Still, it remains true that the sense of 
shame is not the real virtue, but merely a 
preparation for it and nothing more. (Vere- 
cundia: the sense of shame lays the foundation 
for sexual moderation, it being a disposition 
towards it.) The sense of shame is the in- 

[19] 



^cbntating I® I^ktHq 



stinctive acknowledgment that the virtue (of 
chastity) is not yet acquired and that its 
possession is not altogether secure. 

Before the fall, man did not know the 
sense of shame; despite its wholesome ten- 
dency, it is a reminder of the fact that man 
broke God's law. Like every instinct in man, 
the sense of shame can degenerate and be over- 
done so as to consider sinful such words, reflec- 
tions, or actions as are indifferent, good, or 
even prescribed by Divine ordinance. This 
will come to pass especially when the wrong 
and exaggerated sense of shame is fostered by 
an unwise education and direction. Herein 
lies a cause of wrong notions about things sex- 
ual; the consequence is that many educators 
fail to teach the young where reason and char- 
ity imperatively demand enlightenment. We 
sum up this fundamental chapter as follows: 

Educators must Strive to Conceive the 
Sexual Problem in the Light of Faith 
with Reverence and Holy Earnestness; 
they shall Realize the Need of Duly 
Enlightening Youth, and withal Secure 
the Most Necessary Prerequisites to 
Perform this Duty Successfully. 

[20] 




II. Jpf* fMeaning &t Humify 

From the early days of the Church until 
our own times chastity has been most glow- 
ingly extolled. Not indeed as if it alone 
constituted a truly Christian life; but where 
purity is absent, no other necessary Chris- 
tian virtue will thrive. " Chastity without 
other good works does not amount to much, 
but without it no other good work will pros- 
per." Thus St. Gregory the Great indicates 
the position of chastity among Christian vir- 
tues. 1 Alban Stolz held that "as the body 
and its life are the indispensable foundation 
of human existence, so is chastity the indis- 
pensable condition of all moral life," hence, 
of all the evils the child should be most care- 
fully guarded against, impurity and whatever 
may lead thereto hold the first place. 

The glorious tributes which have ever been 
paid to chastity were inspired by the fact 

1 Thirteenth Homily on the Gospels, third Nocturn Off. 
Conf. Pont. "Nee castitas magna est sine bono opere, nee 
opus bonum est aliquod sine castitate." 

[21] 



*<&bncaUn£ la ^nxttQ 



that it is a true school of virtue, and impurity 
on the contrary often becomes a school of 
vice. Piety and the fear of God can develop 
only in a pure heart, as they presuppose the 
capacity of soaring to the ideals of faith. Of 
this an impure heart is incapable. " Blessed 
are the clean of heart, for they shall see God." 
(Matt. v. 8.) Other effects of purity are: 
candor, cheerfulness, love of mortification, 
i.e., of strict disciplining of the lower man, 
which however has nothing to do with gloom, 
but is linked to a high and holy estimation 
even of the body. This tabernacle of the 
soul, being the temple of God, must be 
strictly guarded against all profanation. By 
keeping our hearts pure we comply with St. 
Paul's warning, " Glorify and bear God in 
your body." (1. Cor. vi. 20.) The contrary 
sins and vices thrive luxuriantly on the slimy 
grounds of lechery: disinclination to and 
incapacity of looking up to God, indecision, 
softness, indolence, an ever increasing han- 
kering after pleasure, and often a complete 
depravation to the level of the criminal. 

Moreover, chastity of youth is the best 
preparation for the happy life of the indi- 

[22] 



vidual and of his family. As a rule, a happy 
and pure wedded life, as also a posterity pure 
in body and soul, will follow a chaste youth. 
And when God's grace calls the young to the 
state of virginit}^ they will naturally compass 
the precious boon of their vocation only 
through faithful love for purity. 

Hence educators face here a very important 
duty. Unfortunately families fail to put forth 
sufficient efforts to cultivate chastity. Fences 
should be raised to protect this tender plant 
and to shield it from degrading environments. 
Hence pastors, catechists, and teachers must 
do all in their power by direct teaching 
and instruction, first, to secure especially for 
the young, from whom a better generation 
is to be hoped, the precious treasure of a 
pure heart and, secondly, to remind the first 
educators, i.e. the parents, of their responsi- 
bility, and to help them by word and deed to 
fulfil their duties. 

How appropriate are Hirscher's words: 
"Chastity is not like one of the other vir- 
tues; it is rather the center of all youthful 
righteousness. Consequently the catechist 
must concentrate his attention on this pivotal 

[23] 



^fatratttu} la ^fJurifctj 



point, especially in times like our own, when 
dissipation is rife. Whence shall we seek 
help if we do not succeed in raising a purer 
offspring? What will produce a chaster gen- 
eration in this frivolous age if not the train- 
ing by catechists and pastors? — Truth to 
tell, upon considering the slight influence 
individual priests can exert against the 
stream of corruption, we cannot help think- 
ing that either nothing can be done to stem 
the torrent, or that some day it will be turned 
back all of itself. How few seem to be mind- 
ful of the fact that there is question here of 
life and death, and that the souls of the re- 
sponsible educators shall have to account for 
the prevailing degeneracy.'' 1 

l "Katechetik f " Third Edition 1834, p. 713. 




[24] 




III. iBatu^w atth fytix ^isamttvum 

The dangers which threaten the children's 
purity are partly interior and partly exterior. 

1. The first, such as curiosity, levity, and 
the slowly awakening lust, of themselves sel- 
dom lead to vice. If children are shielded 
against perversion and other exterior dangers, 
they will likely grow up innocent, as well- 
tutored girls do in many countries. Still, the 
opposite occurs, particularly when their sexual 
nature is aroused and stimulated by heredity 
or by wrong education (rich or highly spiced 
food, alcohol, uncontrolled imagination, bad 
literature, lack of occupation and of healthy 
exercise, certain gymnastic exercises, e.g., 
climbing, etc.). With boys puberty consti- 
tutes a danger which only short-sighted 
parents and educators can blink; also lads 
hitherto unspoiled, if not forearmed by timely 
warning and instruction, are brought by in- 

[25] 



bntating ta ^InxitQ 



voluntary (nightly) emissions into the danger 
of procuring for themselves the pleasure con- 
nected therewith by wilful manipulations. 
This constitutes with many the way to secret 
sin. We shall show further on how to fore- 
warn the young (p. 116). 

2. Ordinarily, however, the evil invades 
the child's heart from without, whether it be 
by accidental causes (witnessing sexual rela- 
tions or hearing of them, pictures, show- 
windows, wretched home accommodations, 
etc.) or by direct seduction. 

As to accidental temptations, educators 
need not be over-anxious. Let them recom- 
mend their wards to God's protection, teach 
them prudently, as individual circumstances 
may require; withal let them be quiet and 
patient, and rest assured that God's provi- 
dence will not send innocent children stronger 
temptations than they can bear. 

On the other hand, educators must keep a 
sharp eye on vampires — adults often act as 
such. Parents must be strongly warned about 
the choice of servants, 1 and they must protect 

*See Alban Stolz's "Lehrbuchlein fur Kindsmadchen" 
and "Andenken fur Dienstmadchen." 

[26] 



JPtsuttfirittStf ^£$ttls tin l^ntttQ 

their children against suspicious strangers. 
Alas! it happens that educators turn out 
seducers; more frequently, however, children 
are led astray by their companions; children 
have a remarkable bent to communicate their 
discoveries to others. Moral pest is an apt 
designation of impurity because of the peril 
of contamination. At times perversion begins 
through mere thoughtlessness, to be slowly 
followed by downright wickedness. One 
spoiled child can work a great deal of mis- 
chief unless the innocent are shielded by 
timely instruction and decided intervention of 
educators. Another cause of widespread evil 
is the imprudence of adults, which prompts 
the young to wantonness and vice. Parents 
who cannot afford a bed for each one of their 
children must prevent dangers by solicitous 
and careful warning ("your Guardian Angels 
stand guard between you")> and by watchful- 
ness over the perils thence ensuing (tireless 
and unexpected visiting of the sleeping chil- 
dren). As, notwithstanding the greatest vigi- 
lance, parents cannot become aware of all the 
dangers of depravation, children must be 
trained to report any wrong-doing they may 

[27] 



^httzating i& T^utHq 



witness. (Example: Joseph of Egypt, who 
denounced his brothers to their father on 
seeing them act immodestly.) The main 
sources of impurity are pornographic print 
(books, pictures, moving pictures) and similar 
means of propagation. Far more dangerous 
than books and illustrated secular papers, 
which some parents fail to keep from their chil- 
dren, are the arts which fiends introduce even 
into schools in order to spread immorality. 1 

A further special danger of curruption lies in 
the craze for sexual enlightenment, which seems 
to ignore the distinction between small and 
grown-up children; an enlightenment which — 
as if the easily excited imagination of children 
still needed violent stimuli — consists in the 
most heedless exposition and description of the 
merely physiological side of sexual matters where- 
as the material side ought to be kept in the back- 
ground through the emphasizing of the moral. 

Obscene and vulgar moving pictures should be ta- 
booed in every community. And all right-minded people 
ought to help the movement now on foot to supply 
schools with copies of genuine (uplifting) works of art. 

A widespread cause of corruption is to be found in 
obscene post-cards, in vulgar theatrical plays, and in games 
where a great deal of hugging and kissing is exhibited or 
indulged in. (Note of T.) 

[28] 






Leading Catholic educators indeed recog- 
nize a moderate sexual information as a long 
felt want. Public lechery must be ener- 
getically combated by practical and scientific 
methods. But non-Catholics join us in fight- 
ing the insane onslaughts of sex-reformers. 
F. W. Foerster's book "Sex Ethics and Sex 
Pedagogy " deserves the widest circulation. 
Paulsen speaks of it as follows: "It ap- 
pears as if all the devils were let loose at 
present to lay waste the domain of German 
social life. There is an organized traffic pro- 
moting horrible crimes. Raving women pro- 
claim in pamphlets and novels 'The Right 
to Motherhood/ twaddling poets preach to 
ripe youth the necessity and the right to 
pursue the pleasures of which some people 
seek to deprive them. The newspaper world, 
theaters, novels, lectures by men and women 
would seem to force upon the public as the 
foremost question: 'Must not all obstacles to 
free sexual life be driven from the earth? ' 
At this juncture such a book as Foerster's is 
like the voice of a sober man amid a chorus of 
inebriates." 

Paulsen's observations concerning sexual 
[29] 



^fchntating hi f irrtig 



enlightenment and the only efficient means 
against the pest of immorality are quite 
correct. We cull this extract from them: 
"Such information given at the right time 
and by the right person may be profitable, 
yet the dangers attached to it must not be 
overlooked: arresting the attention on this 
point may also produce other effects. Noth- 
ing more frightful can be conjured up than 
such enlightenment given by cranks and 
fanatics. The question is this: To forestall 
and prevent, above all to prevent, the infec- 
tion of the imagination by low and filthy 
representations, to develop the sense of shame, 
to promote the love of purity by cultivating a 
watchful and tender conscience, finally to 
strengthen the will so that it may overcome 
sensual nature by spiritual domination. The 
habit of self-discipline, the love of work, 
hardening the body, contempt of softness, a 
high ideal of manly force and vigor, and, to 
use a Christian expression, fortitude grounded 
on humility and the grace of God, those are 
the things which render immune (as far as 
possible) from the threatening perils. To 
bring about these results, the will must be 

[30] 



thoroughly trained for years, as there is no 
specific which can be prescribed at the moment 
of danger/ ' 

Disastrous Effects 

Dangers don't work alike everywhere; it 
is unsafe to draw general conclusions either 
from very bad or from very pleasant isolated 
experiences. The fearful havoc they have 
wrought among the most cultured, as statis- 
tics prove, have moved even irreligious friends 
of youth to organize preservation societies. 
Infidel physicians and German university 
professors witness to the incredibly wide- 
spread venereal diseases among students. It 
is easy to conceive the strength of the revolu- 
tionary wave which is overturning the hitherto 
prevailing order, and particularly the morality 
of marriage and sex, as it gathers volume from 
the widespread lewdness. Also there is today 
more mistrust of placing too much confidence 
in school children; teachers, catechists, and 
often the police, tell of cases of appalling 
corruption among school children, especially 
in large industrial centers. The German 
bishops sound the alarm in their noted circu- 

[31] 



^kntaling i® H^nxxiQ 



lar of Aug. 12, 1908: " Victims from the ranks 
of youth no longer satisfy this hellish fiend 
of immorality. He invades also the para- 
dise of childhood, and his ravages are the 
more incurable the tenderer the physical and 
spiritual nature of the child.' ' Many parents 
become convinced of their children's perver- 
sion only when sinful habits of years scarcely 
leave any hope of amendment. 

Catechists and teachers even in most criti- 
cal cases must not lose courage. The re- 
cently organized movement against lechery is 
cheered by its success, and this led Foerster 
to state in his lecture, "On the Old and New 
Aspects of Sex-relations": "We confidently 
look forward to the time when blinded and 
foolish people will see that there are eternal 
truths which cannot be banished by the 
flashy wisdom of the day. A like success 
awaits the prudent and ceaseless efforts of 
individual Christian educators who base their 
hope on supernatural powers." 

A healthy optimism coupled to the requisite 
prudence will compass good results more 
easily even in bad cases than gloomy views. 
Quite noteworthy are these words of the 

[32] 



Swedish physician, Prof. Seved Ribbing, 
addressed to academicians: "I repeatedly re- 
ceived intimate communications from physi- 
cally and spiritually healthy students about 
the difficulties of leading a chaste life, and 
they assured me that I have not sufficiently 
emphasized the ease with which sensual de- 
sires can be curbed and controlled. In my 
twenty years' experience with young and old 
people of all classes, I have never come across 
a single one who declared self-mastery in 
sexual matters impossible, provided, of course, 
there be good will." How the latter must 
show itself the aforesaid doctor thus describes : 
"The struggles to live chastely would not be 
so hard but for books, pictures, and phantasms 
which unduly excite the mind and the feel- 
ings." 1 St. John Chrysostom spoke very 
much like this prominent physician to the 
youths of his day: "When you yield to lewd- 
ness, you don't escape responsibility. Had 
other youths not lived chastely in the past 
and at present, you might have some excuse. 

1 " Sexual Hygiene and its Moral Consequences, 1 ' three 
lectures of Dr. S. Ribbing, Professor at the University of 
Lund (Sweden). German Edition, Stuttgart, 1898. 

[33] 



^EhutaUng t& Ij^ntilQ 



You behold others who keep themselves clean 
and honorable in their lives; and you cannot 
master your youthful passions? You see how 
others overcome a thousand times the allure- 
ments of sin; and you scarcely hold out once? 
Do you want to know the cause? Not youth, 
for then all young folk should be impure; but 
you burn because you throw yourselves head- 
long into the fire. When you attend theaters 
and feed your eyes on naked forms, you not 
only experience some pleasurable sensations, 
but you thereby kindle in your flesh a feverish 
glow. Thus you cause your own disease . . . 
It is easy to lead chaste lives, provided we 
have the will to do so." 




[34] 



Xte*m*m4£M& 




axth TjjjiT&ltct&xs of ^ttrit^ 

The precious but much threatened treasure 
of purity requires solicitous watching. 

Before everything else we must point to 

the SPECIAL SAFEGUARD AGAINST IMPURITY, 

namely, frequent Communion. When educat- 
ors appreciate this gift of God and often lead 
their wards to the Lord's Table from the age 
of discretion, the most pure Body of Christ 
wall work wonders in them, if only the former 
continue instructing and watching the latter. 

We now proceed to the principal interior 
guardian : A wide-awake and well-trained con- 
science. This will be treated in the next 
chapter. We shall say something now about 
exterior guardians. 

1. The first are the Invisible Powers: 
Divine Providence, the Guardian Angels, the 
Saints, Aloysius, Agnes, but especially the 
Blessed Virgin. Educators must train chil- 

[35] 



^QtoraHng ia Rant's t|g 



drcn to honor them and to pray night and 
morning to the Guardian Angels and to Our 
Lady. Recourse to Our Heavenly Mother and 
her invocation at the time of temptation are of 
special importance, and must therefore be fre- 
quently inculcated. Experience proves the effi- 
cacy of the following act of consecration (a) to 
be said night and morning, and of this fervent 
appeal (6) to be used during the temptation : 

(a) My Queen, My Mother, I consecrate 
myself wholly to Thee, and as a proof of my 
surrender I consecrate to Thee my eyes, my 
ears, my mouth, my heart, and myself whole 
and entire. As I am Thine, Good Mother, 
do keep and guard me as thy property and 
possession. Hail Mary, etc. 

(6) O My Queen, My Mother, remember I 
am Thine own. Keep me and guard me as 
thy property and possession. 

Let children and young folks be affiliated 
to sodalities wherever possible. Thereby they 
both enlist themselves as Mary's clients and 
are trained to frequent Communion. Count- 
less young people thus remain pure who would 
otherwise become debauched. 

2. The responsible guardians of the chil- 
[36] 



dren are the parents and the teachers. Their 

main duly is to arouse and cultivate the chil- 
dren's conscience; they must, however, adopt 
many precautions to shield their innocence. 

(a) The parents' responsibility begins even 
before the children's birth. We mentioned 
above the word hereditary sin or predisposi- 
tion to vice. It happens, alas I not unfre- 
quently, that, despite all the solicitude of his 
educators, a child manifests an astonishingly 
strong and precocious sexual bent of which 
heredity is the cause*. There is, of course, a 
great deal of exaggeration in medical works 
anent hereditary vice. It seems dictated by 
the effort to find an excuse for all man's 
aberrations. I [eredity seldom excuses man 
from all responsibility; still it remains true, 
sad to say, that strong predispositions to evil 
can be transmitted to posterity, and, what is 
worse, the conscience of many parents is not 

alive to this fact. Statistics show the baneful 
consequences of parental indulgences, "Blas- 
tophthoria" (genu corruption). Alcohol poi- 
soning is quoted by the doctors as being 
the most common, which is as injurious to 
the brain as to the whole system. Countless 

[37] 



^hntattng t& l^wrxl^ 



physical defects — chief est among them being 
abnormal, ethical, and sexual perversions — 
are the legacy of alcohol-poisoned parents to 
their offspring. It is to be observed that 
such awful injuries to posterity may result 
not only from chronic tippling, but even from 
a single spree at the time of cohabitation. 
Let parents infer thence what earnestness 
and deep responsibility the marital rights and 
duties presuppose. 

A physician who was treating an idiotic 
child received this letter from his father: 
"That child is a continual reproach to me, 
and the source of bitter remorse. That was 
the only day in my life I was drunk. " 

The laws and facts of heredity suffice to 
upset the ideas propagated not only by So- 
cial Democrats, but by prominent marriage- 
reformers, such as: "The indulgence of the 
sexual instinct, like the satisfaction of every 
other craving of nature, is each individual's 
personal affair." No, the fact is quite differ- 
ent. As the commonwealth demands efficient 
guarantees for the protection of the living, so, 
and even more so, does the health of future 
generations require stringent regulations and 

[38] 



£aftfptttrbm at C^sHIm 

— , — : 

sacred guardianship over marriage against the 
unaccountable extravagances of personal con- 
siderations and passions. 

Hence serious obligations rest on educators 
and chiefly on pastors. In the language of a 
doctor: "The conscientiousness of biological 
responsibility for the holiness of future gen- 
erations must be made a factor in our moral 
sentiments/' or in Christian terms: "The 
faithful must be thoroughly alive to their 
sense of accountability to the Heavenly 
Father, who has placed the fate of children in 
their parents' hands.' ' Who will fail to appre- 
ciate the importance and the deep wisdom of 
the usage of the Church which urges upon 
her members a chaste life as the best prepara- 
tion for marriage? Hans Wegener in "We 
Young Fellows" utters this rather peculiar 
though just appreciation of ecclesiastical 
usage: "The law of heredity, of vice-trans- 
mission is the most dreadful verification of 
the ancient threat : ' The fathers' sins shall 
be visited on the children until the third and 
fourth generation.' As to the bestial rude- 
ness of which young men who know that they 
are syphilitic, and yet marry, become guilty 

[39] 



^ptaroHttJg l& Ijfntity 



right along, I will simply say that the whip- 
ping-post should be reintroduced for them. 
. . . Some years ago when our cattle had the 
mouth-and-feet distemper, a tablet was put 
up at all the farms so affected. Cattle were 
thus protected against contagion, but our 
women and the future generation must be 
immolated to the horrible virus of venereal 
diseases." 

(6) A second duty of parents and other edu- 
cators is to watch that sin may not invade the 
young hearts through outward enticements. 
To this effect they must thoroughly know 
the dangers of perversion mentioned above. 
Vigilance should be exercised over the games 
of children, over their behavior on the street, 
at school, and at home, their contact with serv- 
ants, their sleep (wherever possible each child 
in abed apart), their dressing and undressing, 
as well as their bathing. 1 Of course, parents 
beware of scandalizing their own children. 

Alas! many parents deem it irksome to put 
some restrictions on themselves, for their 

1 Parents and guardians must never allow two children, 
whether small or grown-up, together either in the toilet or in 
the bathroom, (Note of T.) 



I -10 I 



Mfafegtmr&si **£ ^asHlg 



children's sake, in things which are otherwise 
lawful; whereas doing so would greatly help 
thorn to self-mastery and self-uplifting. How 
interesting it is to read of the blessings a 
careful education sheds abroad on helpless 

children and on whole nations. What we 
said in the first chapter about the right spirit 
necessary to train their wards to purity 
dearly proves how this duty properly dis- 
charged wholesomely redounds upon the 
educators themselves. May all parents SO be- 
have before their children that these may say 
in after life what Louisa Jlcnscl wrote of her 
parents: "They dearly loved each other; yet 
I never witnessed any trifling or childishness 
between them, nor even a quarrel." 

(c) Moreover, the whole method of educa- 
tion must be calculated to eschew whatever 
may tend precociously to awaken or excite 
the sexual instinct. 

Notwithstanding sad experience and med- 
ical warnings, many parents still offend by 
giving their children rich and highly spiced 
viands; while on the other hand many grow 
up in utter wretchedness. Alcoholic bever- 
ages, long sitting, soft clothing, and soft beds, 

[41 l 



7&hntatin$ h» ;pttritg 



lying abed awake after sufficient sleep, silly and 
sentimental reading, too much pampering and 
fondling, etc., are dangerous incentives. God 
be praised! the olden exigency of wise Chris- 
tian training and living: " Learn self-mastery " 
gradually regains its sway. The degeneracy 
brought about in the sexual field by material- 
istic pedagogues has forced this view even 
upon creedless educators. Paulsen acknowl- 
edges: " Three great imperatives are the eter- 
nal guiding stars of true education: 'Learn 
to obey! Learn to exert yourself! Learn to 
deny yourself and to overcome your lusts! 7 " 
The first cause of over excitement lies in 
our eating system: nearly all people eat too 
much. Again, our food is too rich and too 
strong; we feed ourselves like horses as 
Tolstoi said. Also too long sitting, excessive 
sleeping, which is a certain cause of exciting 
sensuality. There is hardly an exception to 
the rule that youths who, after awaking, stay 
in bed for hours are bound to be corrupt. 
Sudh is the opinion of an unbelieving special- 
ist. 1 Tolstoi's language is vehement indeed, 
but it is a confirmation of Psalm xlviii. 21 • 

1 Payot. 
[42] 



(d) Parents and guardians must keep on 
watching and lovingly guiding the children, 
especially at the time of incipient puberty 
(when they are about fourteen or fifteen, in 
cities earlier, with rough-living country folk 
three or four years later). It would be woful 
to promote subjective dispositions of this age 
(sentimentality, dreaming, linked to coarse- 
ness) by idleness, indiscriminate and inordi- 
nate novel-reading, bad theaters, love-making 
which, though limited at first to sweet dream- 
ing, nevertheless weakens character and frit- 
ters away the precious time of youth. Besides, 
experience teaches that poetical love often 
terminates in horrible filth. Courting without 
the intention and the view of proximate wed- 
lock, as well as wooing without any prospect, 
are generally censurable. At times, indeed, an 
early love may have salutary effects; this case 
however is rare, and the experienced Alban 
Stolz tells us the reason: " When neither of the 
parties is steeled by a thoroughly Christian 
culture, company-keeping is dangerous; al- 
though it may not lead members of the higher 
classes to gross sin, as often occurs with the 
common people, still a merely secular culture 

[43] 



^htttaling l& l^mity 



affords no check to unrestrained imaginations 
and desires. The soul itself yields to sin." 

(e) Wise parents and educators will, of 
course, bear in mind the rule emphasized in 
our preface that, without the support of a 
right all-around education, the utmost solici- 
tude to guard youth against impurity will 
scarcely avail. They must at least remem- 
ber this fundamental of Christian education: 
" Train to healthy godliness and to earnest 
labor." The latter is the best damper on the 
outbursts of the passions; it strengthens the 
will-power against the softness of sensual man 
and turns the mind from dangerous musings. 
Piety lifts man above everything earthly and 
opens the supernatural fount of Divine grace 
and as a fostering of the opposite virtue is the 
surest safeguard against each vice, so are the 
sense of religion, the spirit of prayer and of 
faith the best preventives of impurity. 

Foerster has proved this very thoroughly in 
his "Sexualethik und Sexualpadagogik." He 
thus sums up his arguments : 

" Religion is so fundamental and indispen- 
sable that without it the young, especially 
those of strong temperament, will strive in 

[44] 



vain to live continently, and — if we except 
a few rare cases — to banish and overcome 
violent temptations." And the eminent peda- 
gogue Bishop Sailer wrote, "The most critical 
situations of youth, such as the period of 
awakening sexual love, prove beyond doubt 
that to give an early religious training is the 
educator's paramount duty. In default of 
religion, nothing shall save. Concupiscence 
clutches young folks, and like a giant crushes 
them unawares." 

(/) As the object of education is gradually 
to fit pupils to stand alone, the training to 
purity must progressively so strengthen them 
that they may be equal to the temptations 
without the educators' help. God's aid is 
indispensable even to the most experienced. 
To this effect it is essential to discipline the 
conscience and the will. 




[45] 



1 . Conscientiousness 
What is the Well-trained Conscience? 

We are approaching the hardest point, 
namely, the answer to the question: What is 
the right enlightenment regarding sexual mat- 
ters? And yet, we are not principally con- 
cerned about this teaching, but about that to 
which the instruction is but a means, namely, 
the training of the conscience or educating to 

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. 

Conscience has a double function. It 
judges of the morality of our actions; but it 
does more: It has its roots not only in the 
practical intellect, but also in the will; it is 
not only the herald, i.e., the announcer of the 
Divine Law, but also the monitor and the 
awarder. The voice of conscience impels to 
righteousness and bids us beware of evil 
(conscientia antecedens), and when the sin 
is committed or the victory won, then (con- 

[46] 



scientia consequens) conscience rebukes (re- 
morse) or praises the act (joy of a good 
conscience). To quicken the child's con- 
science, to make it conscientious, instruction 
by no means suffices; nor is it the main thing. 
The chief thing is strongly to imbue the will 
and the heart of the child with high aims and 
noble resolves through an all-sided education; 
the child must be filled with a great love for 
virtue and a great horror of sin, in the matter 
under consideration, with a great love for 
purity and a great hatred of all impurity. 
For the most accurate knowledge of sin and 
virtue, with little love for virtue and slight 
hate of sin, is not yet conscientiousness, as 
consciencelessness may be yoked to the most 
accurate knowledge. 

A well-trained conscience regarding impur- 
ity is that conscience which clearly perceives 
a sin and the danger thereof, and which, on 
the alert at the first peril, immediately re- 
bukes even the slightest faults. 

Thinking readers will readily see the differ- 
ence between the enlightenment which we 
advocate and the exaggerated, one-sided sex- 
information which affects the mind rather 

[47] 



^^ 



'fi&ntaiing iff yurii^ 



than the conscience. The latter mere knowl- 
edge we again deprecate and condemn. 
Champions of the latter consider it the main 
thing and their only concern. We view in- 
formation as necessary, for without definite 
knowledge there is but a false (an anxious, 
exaggerated or blind) and not an enlightened 
conscientiousness; but the main thing abides 
the training of the mind, of the heart, and of 
the will. 

Unfortunately this conscientiousness with 
regard to purity is often lacking; yes, today a 
wave is sweeping across the country tending 
to dull and chloroform it both in public and 
private life. 

Neglecting to train the conscience works 
disastrously even with children. Says Alban 
Stolz: "What so greatly facilitates the per- 
version of children (in whom the sexual in- 
stinct is at first naturally dormant), and why 
a whole crowd or school becomes so speedily 
corrupted, is the peculiar circumstance that 
the children's conscience in this respect is 
mostly unawakened, and therefore they are 
scarcely or at all uneasy when they fall either 
of themselves or through enticement. They 

[48] 



carefully conceal their sin from parents and 
teachers; with reference to God, many chil- 
dren are as little disquieted about this as 
about other processes of nature, and hence 
after sinning thus, they can say their prayers 
just as candidly as if nothing had come to 
pass. 

2. Means to Train the Conscience 

To train the conscience educators must 
strive first and last to implant in the child's 
mind from its tenderest age a horror of all 
immodesty and a love for virtue. What means 
are to be used? 

We ask what course do parents pursue to 
make children conscientious with regard to 
honesty? First, the little ones are accus- 
tomed to respect what belongs to others by 
discipline, by example, by punishment in 
case of offence, by reward and praise when 
they have overcome a temptation. Next, as 
children grow up, parents teach and quote 
reasons. Assigning the reasons is the more 
important, i.e., working on the youthful will 
through motives both natural and especially 
supernatural. Pious and loving educators 

[49] 



^hntaiin^ in Itttritg 



will find it easier to carry out this more im- 
portant duty, i.e., to allege reasons urging the 
children both to avoid what they have been 
taught as sinful, and to love and foster 
the virtue of purity. 

Our religion abounds with these motives; 
we shall soon give the more important ones. 
Educators, however, must see that they select 
those appropriate to every age, and that they 
bring them forward as occasion requires and 
not all at one time. 

Attention is called again to the fact that 
success must not be expected not even from 
the most efficient motives, unless the child 
receive a sound, religious, and all-around 
education. Christian educators must bear 
this well in mind that they should not expect 
every blessing from a single admonition, but 
they must try to eliminate as much as pos- 
sible the defects of the previous up-bringing 
and their consequences. Should there be no 
further result than somewhat lessening the 
evil and hindering its growth, let us content 
ourselves even with this slight effect, rather 
than lose courage and give up further 
efforts. 

[50] 



Catechetical works agree in the enumera- 
tion of the most efficient motives to preserve 
chastity. Besides the general ones: The fear 
of and love of God, there are: 1. God's all- 
pervading presence, as also the Guardian 
Angel's. The simple warning, "God sees 
you," may accomplish more than many argu- 
ments and human considerations. 2. Your 
body is holy: a temple of God since you were 
baptized (and may receive other Sacraments). 
The body of a Christian is more sacred than 
the house of God, as it is a member of the 
body of Christ and the tabernacle of the 
Holy Ghost. "Whoso defiles the temple of 
God, him shall God destroy." (1. Cor. hi. 17.) 

3. The whole man, and thus also the body, is 
God's property: therefore it is sinful to abuse 
it. "Do you not know that your members 
are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that 
you are not your own? for you have been 
purchased with a great price. Glorify and 
bear God in your body." (1. Cor. vi. 19.) 

4. The priest puts (or will soon put) the Body 
of Christ on your tongue, and you receive 
Him in your heart. How can you dishonor 
your tongue by unseemly language and your 

[51] 



^kneathxg t& TfittxitQ 



heart by shameful desires? 5. Man's body is 
now frail, weak, and wretched; but some day 
it shall rise glorious. No genuine Christian 
will desecrate a body destined to such glory. 
6. Depict to older children the punishments 
God has inflicted on the impure: the deluge, 
Sodom and Gomorrha, David; the warnings 
of Christ and of the Apostles. Still, cate- 
chists must speak in such a way that those 
guilty of that sin may not grow despondent, 
but may be moved to confidence, repentance, 
and amendment. 7. Lay stress on the posi- 
tive side, on the sublimity of virtue, and on 
the salutary effects of purity of heart. Love 
of God and of virtue is the keenest spur to 
watchfulness, and a most powerful weapon 
against sin. We have dwelt upon some of its 
good effects (p. 16). Emphasize the impor- 
tance of purity to secure Heaven. Every 
victory won over temptation is a stone for the 
tabernacle of glory and even for the castle of 
happiness in this life. In a word, it must be 
brought home to children what a treasure 
purity is for the present and the future, and 
what a tremendous loss is entailed by impurity. 
How many youths and maidens forfeited their 

[52] 



WtlVrltaintfo $>®n&£Z£niC£ 



purity while laughing and playing without 
suspecting the inestimable harm they suffered. 
Further encouragements educators will find, 
e.g., in "Die Perle der Tugend" (The Pearl of 
Virtue), by Ad. v. Doss; "Sturm und Steuer," 
by Dr. Holl; "Die schonste Tugend und das 
Hasslichste Laster," by Bishop J. Zwerger; 
"Die schonste Tugend/' by Dosenbach; and 
M. Meschler's "Life of St. Aloysius," and in 
Jordan's "The Danger of Youth and a Tried 
Antidote." 

3. Instruction 
A. Necessity 

Though less important than the assigning 
of motives, instruction is more difficult and 
absolutely necessary to educate to purity, 
and it is at least as essential as schooling in 
other moral laws. Children should be taught 
everything about the commandments of God 
before their passions grow strong, and before 
there arises great danger of breaking the 
Divine law; the same rule holds good with 
regard to purity. Unfortunately educators 
frequently shirk their duty in this respect. 
Some may fancy they are acting right in not 

[53] 



J&hmcaUwg, l& TfruxitQ 



broaching this subject to the innocent, but 
the real motive of this omission often is that 
they fear the trouble attached to such train- 
ing of the conscience. This, of course, is no 
excuse for slighting this important educational 
duty, as the young, bound to meet with great 
dangers, would in the end be overcome by 
them. 

Another cause of this neglect is the view or 
the confused sentiment that everything sexual 
and each word spoken thereon is sinful. Such 
notions have at times assumed the propor- 
tions of formal heresies, which also taught 
that marriage was something wicked. A re- 
markable fact is that those rigorists often 
sank into the filthiest depths of vice. The 
Christian truth is this : the abuse only, and in- 
ordinate sexual indulgence are sinful; whereas 
sexual life controlled by reason and faith fully 
harmonizes with the law of nature and was 
raised by our Lord to the high dignity of a 
Sacrament. 

If there are vital interests concerning which 
youth needs the most definite instruction and 
very early training of conscience, the subject 
we are treating certainly belongs to these; 

[54] 



else errors will result, which are either alto- 
gether or almost past correction. Experience 
substantiates that many young people, espe- 
cially girls of pious families in thoroughly 
Christian countries, were entrapped in the 
meshes of seducers only because their parents 
and educators had failed to forewarn them. 
The second German edition of this book called 
forth letters in which priests and pastors again 
confirmed this experience by tragic examples. 

To emphasize that right instruction on 
purity is one of the greatest educational 
duties, we allege these testimonies of men of 
wide experience: 

Hirscher in his preface to "The Life of 
the Blessed Virgin," says: "I have been told 
there are in this volume certain passages 
which may scandalize maidens. 1 I reply: 
Should there be reason to fear that the 
perusal of my book will draw girls' attention 
to sexual relations, of which they were hereto- 
fore ignorant, I hold such will be the case only 
with those who have grown up in childlike 
innocence. Their very nature and surround- 
ings would shortly bring them to this knowl- 
x SeeApp. 16. 
[55] 



9ff 



in®, iu 



edge anyhow. I question whether it be 
better to leave girls to their own thinking and 
suspecting, to the spying of and listening to 
their companions, or to inform them on 
sexual matters through the lives of Saints. 
I decidedly champion the latter course. Alas! 
while mothers believe that ignorance is bliss 
for their children, the latter are nowise igno- 
rant, but they have learned everything from 
all sides; and they have been taught exactly 
that which they should never have learned. 
Therefore mothers should not leave sexual 
enlightenment to strangers, but impart it 
themselves, in connection with the lives of 
our saintly models. 

Alban Stolz also severely censures this 
usual negligence as well as the insufficiency of 
the instruction ordinarily given. Jungmann 
quotes him with slight verbal alterations, and 
all experienced pastors will agree with him: 
" It is a great pity that many catechisms slink 
away from this sin with a few empty expres- 
sions and leave the explanation of the empty 
words to the teacher's good or bad sense. It 
was precisely the catechism-makers' duty 
prudently to present the right information in 

[56] 



a sufficiently intelligible and yet not too plain 
a manner. 

To tell children that they should " beware 
of doing things which they would be ashamed 
of before their parents or teachers/ ' amounts 
to nothing. For many things happen to 
children which trouble them, though they are 
perfectly harmless, especially if their parents 
are strict with them. To blush or to be 
ashamed is no index to guilt. A child caught 
praying aloud in a room or sternly charged 
with stealing will generally turn scarlet. Plow 
can we expect light-headed children to reflect 
at every thoughtless act of theirs, whether 
the aforesaid rule apply to it or not. I know 
of many cases where young people assured 
me they would never have fallen into that 
sin, nor persisted in it for years, had their 
parents or teachers instructed or warned them. 
Without emphatic teaching about this matter, 
outward or inward temptations to impurity 
don't disturb the young folk's conscience; at 
most they may feel some weak hazy qualms 
which prove quite ineffectual. On the other 
hand I am not aware of a single case of 
danger or harm resulting from earnest in- 

[57] 



f£&ttmHst0 $0 ftttitg 



struction given in carefully chosen words. I 
strongly maintain that such clergymen and 
parents are blinded by the devil who ween 
that the surest way to keep their wards 
innocent is never to tell them aught about 
such things; as though the darkness of igno- 
rance could shield a soul against a vice which 
loves darkness above all, which needs it, and 
cannot thrive without it. That wise silence 
will compass one thing: children will conceal 
these sins in confession, as they do not know 
how to accuse themselves thereof, or they 
believe that such things cannot and may not 
be mentioned in a decent way, and because 
their conscience is not awake regarding this 
matter. Concealing this important sin may 
last for years until it brings them down to 
the chambers of death. (Prov. vii. 27.) l 

B. General Remarks on the Way of Instructing 

This teaching, as we stated, aims at cultivat- 
ing a chaste conscience. Accordingly, it must 
plainly tell what is sinful. This is a very 
hard point: neither too much nor too little 

^ungmann: "Theorie der geistl. Beredsamkeit." Third 
edition, II, 222. (Not in the fourth edition.) 

[58] 









'$frtll~tv*intb (tyanmtttntt 

must be said; hence it is absolutely indis- 
pensable for young catechists to weigh every 
word whereby they must make children 
understand what is sinful or dangerous with 
regard to purity. It is advisable to write 
out and even to read this instruction. 1 

Children should be prepared for this teach- 
ing in their homes before they are of school 
age. Where there is a will there is a way. 
When, for instance, little ones do something 
which their seniors would deem immodest, it 
will suffice to say to them sternly: "Ish! 
don't do that." In order gradually to 
awaken the conscience, modesty, this excel- 
lent shield, can easily be acquired by habit; 
in fact, the early years' education amounts to 
little more than accustoming children to cer- 
tain ways. Therefore, with little ones there 
is no question of difficulty, except as far as 
the watchfulness over their behavior is con- 
cerned. Although an early sexual awakening 
is an abnormal oddity among children, still 
parents must be on the lookout lest playful 
fondling lead later to the formation of sinful 

1 Jungmann: " Theorie der geistl. Beredsamkeit." Third 
edition, II, 223. (Not in the fourth edition.) 

[59] 



&t* 



^hnzalin^ I® ^luri% 



habits. Quiet children ought to be watched 
more where they believe themselves alone, 
and lively ones more when they are with 
others. 

With the age of discretion, i.e., when chil- 
dren commence attending school, begins prop- 
erly the duty of instructing. To answer the 
question as to how far the teaching should go, 
a sharp distinction is to be drawn between 
class-teaching at school or church, and private 
teaching which parents first, and catechists 
next, are bound to give in and outside the 
confessional. 

Our modern enlightenment promoters blun- 
dered most with regard to the class-teaching. 
We shall deal with it first. The following 
paragraphs will be most useful to catechists. 
Parents may profit by them also, as their 
educational endeavors must harmonize with 
the school-teaching. 

4. Class-Teaching of the Minims 
A. Foreword 

Toddlers are to be instructed only on 
modesty and immodesty (pudicitia — impu- 

[60] 






tlUtrmnth ^nmtitntt 

dicitia), not on purity and impurity (castitas 
— luxuria). 

By modesty we understand here that tender 
feeling which considers and shuns as sinful 
not only direct offences against chastity or 
the abuse of the sexual organs, but also what- 
ever may lead to impurity: improper looks, 
words, uncovering and touching of the body. 
Though distinct, modesty and purity are 
linked together. Modesty is a natural sign 
of genuine purity and its best shield. 

Children of the lower grades, as a rule, 
commit only faults against modesty and not 
directly against purity. Instructors shall be 
mindful of this at the class-teaching. Even 
should worse corruption have crept in, only 
modesty and immodesty can generally be 
dealt with. The grave sin of impurity may 
be merely hinted at in such a way that 
only those who may be addicted to it shall 
understand. 

B. Method of Instruction 

The catechist must first explain what im- 
modesty is. This can easily be done with the 
history of Noah and his sons. 

[61] 



ybntating is? qinxitQ 



Sketch: Noah made wine, and got drunk. 
He did not sin thereby, as he did not know 
the strength of the wine. He lay naked 
(altogether uncovered) in the tent. That 
was no sin for him either, as he did not know 
what he was doing. His son Cham saw this; 
and instead of covering his father, he went 
to his brothers, and told them laughing what 
he had seen. The two other brothers then 
took a cloak and covered their father with 
their faces turned back so as not to see his 
nakedness. Cham had sinned through im- 
modest looks and words; he had gazed im- 
modestly on his father lying there naked, and 
then boldly talked about that to his brothers. 

So you would be immodest, you would sin 
against the sixth commandment, by need- 
lessly uncovering such parts of your body 
which should always be covered, or by looking 
at such parts of your body and touching them. 
Mind well the whole of your body must not 
always be covered, for instance, the arms, the 
feet. But a modest child will not let other 
children see him naked, for example, when 
bathing; but he would put on a bathing suit. 

It is also a sin wilfully to think of immodest 
[62] 



ell~ttaintb (&&n&ttt%xt£ 



things, to wish for them, speak of them, or 
listen to indecent language. Doing so is sinful 
and forbidden by the sixth and ninth command- 
ments. God has added the ninth command- 
ment to make us still more careful against 
such sins. These two commandments are . . . 
Recapitulation: Thus it is a sin for a child 
wilfully (and unnecessarily) to do such things, 
to wish for them, to look at them, or read 
them with the eyes; to speak or sing them 
with the mouth; to touch them with the hands; 
to lust after them or take pleasure in them 
with the heart; to do them or allow them to 
be done to one's body. (Linking these ways 
of sinning together by the different parts of 
the body helps the memory.) 

In the second place, the gravity of this sin 
against modesty must be explained. While 
it is necessary emphatically to warn against 
it, one must beware of exaggeration or rigor- 
ism, to hinder a false conscience in the chil- 
dren; to represent as sinful every immodest 
look and touch is false, and will cause con- 
fusion, as children often do such things through 
mere thoughtlessness, levity, or curiosity. The 
wicked sinful pleasure (delectatio venerea) 

[63] 



^bnedking in fittitg 



is mostly quite unknown to them; hence there 
is less danger of it arising through such 
thoughtless touches, looks, and words; yet 
that (seeking wicked pleasure) is the reason 
why such actions are deemed impure and 
sinful. 

Therefore, one must proceed with the ex- 
planation in this way: These sins of immodesty 
are mortal sins when they are committed quite 
wilfully and with the view of seeking wicked 
pleasure, for God abhors everything like that 
which is done wilfully and to procure wicked 
pleasure. Whatever is done through thought- 
lessness, levity, curiosity, or sensitiveness, is 
not a great sin, but only a venial sin. But, 
you know, this sin also offends God. God 
will not love so much a child who lightly 
commits venial sins, and will no longer give 
him so many presents of grace. And so a 
child who makes little of venial sins will 
easily fall into mortal sin. A mortal sin is 
that which is done out of wicked pleasure- 
seeking. Oh! One can commit awful sins 
against modesty and purity. Woe to the 
child who dies in mortal sin. He would go 
to hell. None of you want to go to hell. 

[641 



tlt*txainth (§®nm€ttxt£t 

Therefore you should be modest and pure. 
I will tell you how a modest child behaves. 
(Under thirdly.) But first something more: 
At times it is necessary to look at, or touch 
such parts of the body which are otherwise 
kept covered and not touched, for instance, 
when one is sick or something hurts or itches. 
He who simply wants to get rid of the pain 
or the unpleasant feeling does not sin by 
touching his body. What is necessary is not 
sinful. 

Some may object that representing many 
an immodest thing as only a venial sin will 
not sufficiently hinder it: We reply, it is 
always wrong even with a good intention or 
object in view, to exaggerate the guilt of sin; 
besides, many a child would instinctively per- 
ceive the object of the false exaggeration and 
slight the lesson given; finally, it is wrong to 
hold that children make little of venial sins. 
Instead of exaggerating one way or the other, 
let catechists strive to fill the children with 
horror of venial sin and with strength to 
resist it. 

Another objection which holds good against 
all class-teaching of this subject is that the 

[65] 



^fatraBstg in |?ttrtt|g 



explanation: "Such things are mortal sins if 
done to procure wicked pleasure/' will pre- 
vent many children from knowing when they 
commit a mortal sin. I reply: To make 
matters clear, individual instruction is to be 
resorted to. The catechist will therefore refer 
both to confession and to private instruction. 
(See under fourthly.) In class-teaching no 
more can be said. 

Thirdly , the application must be made to 
concrete things of the child's life. Mey has 
some good points on this in his catechism 
lesson on the sixth commandment. 

We quote some things from it with slight 
alterations: How does a modest child act? 
The moment a child gets up early in the morn- 
ing, he (like all decent God-fearing people) 
dresses at once. He does not look on or 
touch parts of his body which should always 
be covered, nor will he allow others unbe- 
comingly to look at or touch him. On seeing 
that his little brother or little sister, while 
playing or sitting, has lifted his or her dress 
too high, he does not look on, but cries out 
at once: "Pull your dress down!" He does 
not like to hear vile language, but he feels 

[66] 



AUitmttth (Eim&citntt 



sad over it, and goes away. When something 
immodest comes to his mind, he does not keep 
it in his head nor think over it, but he drives 
it away as we drive off wasps which light on 
our faces. He does not enter the water-closet 
(toilet) when someone else is in it, or when 
otherwise the child steps aside, he is modest 
and goes out of the sight of others. At night, 
when undressing, he is careful again that no 
one may see him naked or half naked. Then he 
nicely lies down in bed, and does not feel over 
his body, but crosses his hands on his breast. 
When several children have to sleep to- 
gether they don't feel one another's bodies, 
but they think: "Our Guardian Angels are 
between us and watch what we are doing. 
So we will not do anything wrong." As 
throughout the day, so before falling asleep, 
the good child thinks of God's presence. He 
sees and hears everything. No sin, though 
committed in a dark corner, can be hid from 
Him. Therefore modest children beware of 
everything that would be wrong before God; 
also they pray well to their Guardian Angels 
who guide and protect us against impurity. 
They love the Blessed Virgin too. She takes 

[67] 



**Ehn£atinQ in ^nxtl^ 



her children under her mantle to keep their 
souls pure. Wind up by relating how St. 
Stanislaus could not bear to hear improper 
language, but fell to the ground when he 
heard people use bad words around him. 
That is why God loved him so much. He is 
now with the Angels in Heaven. Be always 
modest. Modest, pure children go to Heaven, 
to the Angels; immodest people often are cast 
into hell, to the devils. 

Fourthly: As private instructions only can 
go into details, the catechists will say to the 
children of age to go to confession: "If you 
wish to remain pure, be perfectly open with 
your confessor. Tell him whatever you have 
done against modesty or purity. And when 
you doubt whether something is a sin or a 
grievous sin, tell the priest; 'I have something 
more against the sixth commandment.' He 
will gladly help you and tell you whether or 
how it is sinful." 

The catechist may refer the children to 
other private instruction. When he is aware 
that their parents are eager and able to teach 
them, he will inspire them with the great- 
est confidence towards them. But as many 

[68] 



tll'lxaintk (§#n&tttntt 

parents are very remiss in this duty of instruct- 
ing their offspring, the priest will often have 
to make up for the parents' neglect. How 
can he do this? (See p. 110, etc.) 

5. Class-Teaching of the Older School 
Children 

1. In explaining impurity before a class, 
catechists cannot go further than with the 
pupils of the lower grades. Let them repeat 
what they taught before of modesty and 
immodesty. The children will understand 
much better now. Other Bible stories should 
be used (Joseph in the house of Putiphar — 
Sampson — David's fall and punishment — 
Susanna — Mary Magdalen), and emphasize 
still more that immodesty leads to very 
grievous sins of impurity. Teachers must 
insist that whatever is quite wilful and done 
to procure wicked pleasure is a mortal sin. 
Therefore, when something immodest is done 
merely through levity, thoughtlessness, curi- 
osity, sensitiveness, or without sufficient re- 
flection, it is not a mortal sin; but wicked 
pleasure may easily supervene, and then it 
becomes a mortal sin. 

[69] 



^hnt*tin$ in futil^t 



Even to older children no explanation may 
be given of this wicked pleasure (delectatio 
venerea), nor of the ways it can be procured. 
For, as public instruction cannot be so definite 
or so adapted to every one's capacity, chil- 
dren who are altogether ignorant of it might 
by this explanation be prompted first by 
curiosity and then by downright malice to 
impure deeds. We must not forget that 
imagination and concupiscence are very 
strong with regard to these matters, and that 
the mere knowledge of delectatio venerea 
might prove a continual source of temptation 
which children could not resist. Those chil- 
dren acquainted with a grievous sin will 
understand wicked pleasure without further 
explanation. (How far explanations may go 
for the older children and in private instruc- 
tions will be stated on pages 95 and 116.) 

The Roman Catechism has the following 
warning: In the exposition of this matter, let 
the parish priest be very cautious and prudent 
and let him treat with great delicacy of lan- 
guage a subject which requires moderation 
rather than copiousness of speech; for there 
is reason to apprehend that, by detailing too 

[70] 



AUtxaintb (Qtnx&titntt 



profusely and copiously the various modes in 
which men may depart from the injunction 
of this law, he may, perhaps, light upon 
those topics which often supply matter to 
inflame, rather than means to extinguish 
lust. 

Prudence and reserve must not lead chil- 
dren to suspect something mysterious behind 
everything sexual, for this precisely would 
stimulate their imagination. The object of 
this prudence is to preclude children's too 
early acquaintance with causes of perversion. 
Withal educators must remove the suspicion 
of there being anything mysterious or extraor- 
dinary in things sexual, as every other allure- 
ment to man's sensuality is easily robbed of 
its strength by exposing its emptiness, and 
showing that whatever excitement there is in 
it is the result of an overheated imagination. 
Therefore we lay stress on every word of the 
sixth commandment being simple and candid 
though earnest. 

2. These older children especially (of whom 
we speak now) must be admonished to be 
perfectly sincere, to unbosom themselves of 
all their sins and doubts in confession, and, 

[71] 



^Ekntating l& ^4tyifcg 



if necessary, to ask for explanations which 
cannot be attended to in class-teachings. 

Schoberl says rightly in his "Katechetik": 
Admirable disposition of Divine Providence! 
The secret of the sexual relation is placed here 
under the seal of sacramental confession. If 
this Sacrament did not exist, it would have to 
be invented, were it only for the instruction 
on the sixth commandment, which must be 
given to children, and cannot better be given 
anywhere than in the confessional. Here 
children lay bare the deepest recesses of their 
souls; they reveal the doubts which spring up 
about the age of ten or twelve concerning 
this matter; then their thoughts, desires, their 
interior and exterior dangers and occasions of 
impurity. Children interrogate and the priest 
answers in God's name in a manner befitting 
the individual spiritual circumstances and 
needs. Of course, confessors will meet with 
some difficulties here. Priests must question 
most prudently in order not to teach new 
ways of sinning, and yet clearly enough to 
find out if any grievous sin have been 
committed. 

The following statement of a Protestant 
[72] 



pastor on confession is quite interesting: 
" Thorough unburdening of the heart is neces- 
sary. The idea of confession is right in 
principle, although the usual set way of the 
Catholic practice of it is wrong, especially as 
the most serious cases of the penitents' dis- 
orders of conscience and anxieties often slip 
the memory and can be found only by careful 
and loving questioning. 1 I have observed 
that the most intimate unbosoming in prayer 
often fails to relieve." 

In these last years such testimonies, espe- 
cially from physicians, abound. They agree 
in praising the salutary effects of confession. 

3. Catechists must lay special stress on the 
motives for leading pure lives with older 
children; besides the reasons given above 
(p. 43) they must bring home to the children : 

(a) The beauty and joys of chastity, so 
that they may find real happiness in un- 
clouded purity and, on the contrary, may 
turn with disgust and hate from the trouble- 
and misery-breeding impurity. 

x That is exactly what all conscientious confessors do. 
Outsiders ought to study our doctrines and practices before 
venturing to criticize them. (Note of T.) 

[73] 



^htttatin^ t® TfintilQ 



(6) The punishments of that vice: Those 
inflicted by God. (Roman Catechism, Part 
III, Ch. VII, 9.) The shame and the con- 
temptibility of that sin. (Ditto 8.) The 
harm done to body and soul; the blinding of 
the soul is given by the Roman Catechism as 
one of the greatest punishments of impurity, 
and experienced pastors will readily find 
examples from lives around them. 

(c) Motives of hope and confidence to 
encourage those addicted to impurity who 
desire to rid themselves of it; yet a horror is 
to be inspired not against the body itself, 
but merely against the vice, and pains must 
be taken to forestall the impression that 
everything sexual is sinful, whereas only the 
abuse of God's wise ordinance is sinful (comp. 
pp. 14 and 47). 

4. Catechists must carefully instruct their 
children on the dangers of impurity, and sup- 
ply them with the means to preserve chas- 
tity. Certain questions about this are to be 
found in catechisms; add to them instructions 
supplemented by apposite Bible stories. 

The Roman Catechism, Part III, Ch. VII, 
enumerates the following dangers illustrating 

[74] 



AUlxainth (Q&n&tittttt 

them by the Scriptures: Idleness (Ezech. 
xvi. 49); gluttony (Jer. v. 7; Luk. xxi. 34; 
Eph. v. 18); unrestrained wandering of the 
eyes (Mt. v. 28; xviii. 9; Mk. ix. 46; Job 
xxxi. 1; 2. Chron. xi; Gen. xxxiv. 2; Dan. 
xiii. 8; Eccl. ix. 5); over-dressing of women 
(Eccl. ix. 8; 1. Petr. iii. 3; 1. Tim. ii. 9); 
ribald language, (1. Cor. xv. 33); indecent 
songs, dances, books, pictures (Cf. Cone. 
Trid. sess, 25, deer, de sctis imaginibus.) 

As means to preserve chastity are recom- 
mended in the same book: shunning all the 
dangers quoted; frequent confession and Com- 
munion, prayer with alms and fasting: "For 
chastity is a gift of God, which He grants to 
those who rightly ask for it"; also God does 
not allow us to be tempted above our strength; 
other penances, watchings, pilgrimages (comp. 
1. Cor. ix. 25, Rom. xiii. 1.4). 

5. On the difference of the sexes something 
may be said to the children even of the 
lower grades. 

Let this be done not in connection with 
the sixth commandment, but on other occa- 
sions, as with the story of the creation of 
Eve. God in His wisdom created the first 

[75] 



^jtorjtBttg la |Jttsifcf| 



men as male and female. Adam was to be 
the father and Eve the mother of all men. 
Therefore all children come into the world as 
boys or girls; boys grow into youths and men; 
girls into maidens and women. 

The object of these apparently super- 
fluous remarks is to accustom the children 
early to look upon everything, also the dif- 
ferences of sexes, as being so ordered by 
God. Hereby we firmly establish the moral 
side of things sexual against the merely 
physical, and this is a capital rule for all 
sexual pedagogy. 

Furthermore, the children's attention should 
be directed to the different properties and 
natural attributes of both sexes; and, what 
is more important, the whole education 
should carefully guide and train these diverse 
powers and inclinations; with boys the 
knightly character, with girls the motherhood 
instinct. Much harm to individuals and to 
society results from the tendency of rendering 
men effeminate and women mannish. Elis. 
Gnauck-Kuhne rightly observes "The man- 
liest man and the womanliest woman will be 
the finest ornaments of their sex." "Chiv- 

[76] 



Araittth (&&n&£%tn£t 



airy " is, of course, not the ridiculous character 
of many "knights" of the ball-room, but it is 
the instinctive gradually definite conscious- 
ness of the earnest duty to which man is 
called of fighting injustice, protecting the 
weak, working for the family, the community, 
the country, and the Church. Superior bodily 
and mental strength never turns the knightly 
man into a ruffian; he is particularly con- 
siderate towards woman and ready to defend 
her. 

Children may be told: God made boys and 
girls for different life-tasks; youths and men 
have to do hard labor, especially outdoors; 
girls and women do the inside work and care 
for the little children. Therefore the Creator 
endowed the sexes differently: man is stronger, 
has more thought- and will-power; woman 
has a tenderer heart. That is why girls must 
become very good and pious, help their 
mothers, take care of their little brothers and 
sisters, be reserved, and not take up the 
games and gymnastics of boys. (Emphasize 
these particulars according to countries and 
circumstances.) 

Of you, boys, God expects that you learn 
[77] 



Jzlbnealtn^ in I^uvHq 



industriously, that you accomplish something 
as men. Learn to obey that you may not 
become insubordinate; beware of being rough, 
especially with those weaker than yourself. 
(Cf. pp. 123 and 126.) 

6. We unqualifiedly reprobate as unbecom- 
ing and dangerous the project of modern sex- 
reformers advocating the direct teaching in 
school of the merely physical propagation of 
man. We shall speak of private instruction 
further on. All the grounds set forth in 
favor of this method of enlightenment, were 
there an appearance of truth in them, cannot 
do away with the dangers nor with the prac- 
ticable unfeasibility of such public sexual 
teaching, even were the teachers men of 
mature age; in common schools, such class- 
instruction would at least directly impair the 
sense of shame, besides proving injurious 
also on other scores. All that may be done 
in this line in the class-room is but an indirect 
preparation for the study of natural history 
by referring to the law of propagation to 
which the whole organic world is subject; one 
must guard against saying too much here, 
and above all, a comparison between animals 

[78] 



~txainth (E&n&titntt 



and men is utterly unbecoming. More of 
this on pp. 80, 85, 102. 

6. Class-Instruction on Marriage for 
Young Folks about to Leave School 

1. Shortly before graduating or, according 
to circumstances, after they enter college, the 
young should be given an instruction on 
marriage, much more complete than they 
received in the catechism lessons on the 
Sacraments. Boys and girls must be taught 
in bodies apart. Thus there will be more 
freedom for the speaker and less liability to 
distraction with the hearers. 

Such an instruction at this age is necessary 
to hinder serious missteps through ignorance 
and wantonness. The more important the 
duty, the earlier and the more imperative the 
preparation for it. 

Hirscher says: A clear convincing intimate 
and modest instruction for catechumens (and 
all young people) is of all the greater impor- 
tance because the less insight they have into^ 
the high meaning of the sexual, the more they 
fall; and the greater their knowledge of and 
their enthusiasm for the sexual as a sublime 

[79] 



JZbntaling i*» ^wirit^ 



creation of God's wisdom and grace, the 
less they err. How infinitely regrettable that 
false fear and shame should keep educators 
from clearly setting forth the holy phase 
of a subject of which hoodlums expose and 
flaunt the unholy at every street corner. 
(Katechetik.) 

2. What is our attitude in regard to the 
merely physical and physiological side of this 
question? Shall we at least for these older 
pupils yield to the suggestions of those mod- 
ernists who recommend instruction with illus- 
trating charts? We answer with Hirscher: 
Let catechists never teach the material side 
of sex-properties, as this is generally the 
parents' business. Fortunate are they who 
were not instructed herein too early, by such 
as had not the call to impart that information. 
Even now the catechist shall deal only with 
the moral and religious aspects. Let him 
bear in mind, however, that most of these 
fourteen-year old children are acquainted 
with the physical aspect as well. This sup- 
position will enable him to speak more freely; 
he will have less trouble to select his words 
than before younger pupils. 

[80] 



tiUixatnth (Qvn&Htnict 

Is the fact which we suppose here some- 
thing normal or is the knowledge of even the 
material side of things sexual precocious at 
this age? Not necessarily, as it may properly 
keep pace with the physical development, so 
that by the time of sexual maturity the 
knowledge thereof may also be complete. 
Two points, however, must be observed: First, 
contrary to the trumpeting of the countless 
advanced romantic sex-illuminators, we hold 
that this full knowledge is quite obtainable 
without wallowing in the mire of sin. De- 
bauchery has as little to do with the high and 
clear appreciation of marriage as the bearing 
of the insane has with the laws of logic. 
Secondly, complete sexual maturity does not 
coincide with the age of puberty; it is rather 
that period when man is not only physically, 
but physically and morally fit to enter wed- 
lock. Professor Seved Ribbing designates the 
normal marriage-age for northern countries 
that of about twenty-six for men, and twenty- 
three for women. 

To our minds the most natural course were 
gradually to attain to the full knowledge of 
sex matters shortly before marriage. Foerster 

[81] 



Tfcbntating in f tcrtiii 



holds the same view, because innocence has 
this advantage that it keeps the mind of 
adolescents free from sexual phantasms and 
reflections; and this immunity is at times a 
much greater preservation than thorough 
knowledge. The fact is that most young 
persons become thoroughly conversant there- 
with in their early teens. Their own thinking 
and experience, allusions of adults, often 
unfortunately, direct information from such 
as have no business to give it, happenings in 
the animal kingdom, etc., furnish that knowl- 
edge. Indeed, the danger of wicked pre- 
cocious enlightenment is so great nowadays 
that wise parents and tutors begin the fore- 
stalling private instruction sooner than would 
otherwise fit in with the natural undisturbed 
educational development. Foerster adds to 
his words quoted above: " Unfortunately the 
fact which confronts us at present is that, in 
the country as well as in cities, from all kinds 
of roily sources this information steadily flows 
into the child-world in its crudest and most 
dangerous forms, so as to leave the pedagogue 
not the choice between knowledge and igno- 
rance, but between foul and clean knowledge. 

[82] 



tlh~lx*inth (^&ns€%cntt 



And the timely earnest and confidential in- 
struction, as set against infection, is just as 
profitable as timely grafting is to preclude 
blight. 

3. All are agreed on the necessity of a 
thorough instruction on marriage for common 
school graduates. Opinions differ, however, 
as to the substance of such a lesson. We are 
aware that our sketch on page 85 will not 
suit everybody, as some may consider our 
language too plain and liable to scandalize. 

There will undoubtedly be cases where even 
the carefully selected words of the following 
sketch may positively do more harm than 
silence, so that prudence would counsel still 
greater reserve in a public lecture to hinder 
the possible "seandalum pusillorum or phari- 
saicum." Nevertheless, such cases will be 
rare, and will occur in special localities, where, 
for instance, there is strong prejudice against 
the catechist. As a rule, though, no more 
harm will result from a careful instruction 
than that some may be astonished, and in 
their surprise may form a hasty unfavorable 
judgment and perhaps sneer. But what is 
that compared with the awful havoc which 

[83] 



J&bntalin0 in ^ttrifcg 



complete silence would cause to youth and 
the future generation! Certainly tact as well 
as prudence must preside at the instruction; 
very young priests especially must be careful; 
nevertheless, an exaggerated anxiety must 
not over-rule wisdom. Another objection, 
that it boots more to fill the heart with holy 
fear and love, than to enlighten the mind, we 
have sufficiently anticipated by what we said 
on conscientiousness (p. 46). Love for purity 
and hate for lewdness is ever the main thing, 
of course; but how can young folks acquire 
this love and hatred, unless we distinctly tell 
them what we should love, and what we 
should shun and hate. The blessings of 
chastity beloved of God and its significance 
for the welfare of individuals and society as 
well as the curse of the opposite vice must be 
plainly shown forth agreeably to truth and 
reality, and must not be based on hazy ex- 
periences. 

4. In using the following sketch catechists 
may weave in Biblical examples to lift every- 
thing still higher into the sphere of faith, and 
make it more sacred and more efficacious. 
The tone of the instruction must be pervaded 

[84] 



by religious earnestness. Boys and girls are 
separated. 

Outline of Instruction 

Foreword: I am about to speak to you on 
a matter which St. Paul called a great Sacra- 
ment in Christ and in the Church, which is of 
the utmost importance for the whole of man- 
kind, and on which may depend your tem- 
poral and eternal happiness; a matter which, 
to God's dishonor, young and old make a 
subject of sinful witticisms and jokes, the 
Sacrament of matrimony. 

1. It was God's will that multitudes should 
people the earth, serve Him and go to Heaven. 
That is the result of God's love. As He chose 
to create and make happy millions and mil- 
lions of Angels, so also He wants millions and 
millions of men. For men's sake, He created 
uncountable plants and animals. 

2. How did God's wisdom provide for the 
multiplication of mankind? By creating man, 
male and female, and instituting holy mar- 
riage. 

(a) Three different kinds of living beings: 
Pure spirits (Angels); beings endowed with a 

[85] 



TEbntttting hi y«irii^ 



body (plants and animals), and man between 
them. By his soul man is like the angels — 
immortal. By his body, man resembles plants 
and animals. The object of this distinction 
of the three classes of living beings is that the 
children may clearly perceive God's wisdom 
in the way man is propagated: The wonderful 
union of matter and spirit in man, and cor- 
responding to this, his propagation is quite 
different from that of animals — material and 
spiritual. (Particular stress is to be laid on 
the Creation of the soul, thus showing the 
boundless difference between the propaga- 
tion of man and of animals. Continue:) 

(6) According to man's nature, God has 
provided for man's increase. How did the 
Angels come into existence? Not from other 
Angels. Angels have no father and mother; 
but they came directly from God's hands, 
having been created. So it is with man's 
soul. You did not get your soul from father 
and mother. But from God alone. And as 
the soul is the principal part, we must say: 
Man is mainly created by God out of nothing. 
Yet you come from your parents too. God 
does not make man's body by Himself alone, 

[86] * 



but He wants the parents, father and mother, 
to work along with Him. Therefore, father 
and mother are our bodily father and bodily 
mother. (We intentionally avoid the expres- 
sion: "The body comes into existence as with 
the animals "; and first, because with man the 
union of the bodies of parents does not remain 
something merely material, but it must have 
a soul — it must be animated and directed by 
wise and holy purposes; and, secondly, as 
man's propagation must be protected against 
all low views, it is essential to emphasize that 
parents simply cooperate with God, as the 
bodily union has such an effect only through 
God's almighty power.) 

(c) Why did God ordain it so? For two 
reasons: First, because He allows that crea- 
tures everywhere cooperate as far as lies in 
their power to preserve and perfect the whole 
creation. That proves God's power and wis- 
dom. For, such an artist is greater who not 
only makes beautiful works of art himself, 
but who can also communicate his own talent 
to his pupils and make them even surpass 
him. This God does: He gives creatures, His 
pupils, talent, and power to bring forth under 

[87] 



hntating h* iJstriig 



His direction such things which man's art 
can never accomplish. Secondly, God has 
willed it so because of His love. He knows 
that parents need much love to raise their 
children, that only great love could be capable 
of making the sacrifices necessary for the chil- 
dren's education; and children are brought up 
much better when their parents love them 
much. See then how wisely God acted in 
putting that love in the parents' heart. He 
knows that man has a special love for that 
which he makes himself: That is why God has 
willed that parents should cooperate with 
Him in making their children's bodies. Hence, 
you understand why step-parents lack that 
great love, unless God's grace supply it. 

(d) Therefore, also, God has created two 
sexes — male and female, and He willed that 
they should be united by the holy bonds of 
marriage, in order that they may cooperate 
with Him in the creation of new men. 

(e) And as God created man, his soul and 
the wonderful powers of his body as well, out 
of sheer love, so parents should cooperate 
with God simply out of love in making the 
bodies of their children. That is why parents 

[88] 



tilAratntb ty&n&tttntt 



must lovingly live together, and then, if it 
be God's will, they get children. (This: "If 
it be God's will," must be emphasized so that 
even children may know why some parents 
have children and some not. This whole 
paragraph aims at preventing the common 
view of marital rights and duties.) (Compare 
p. 107.) Thus you see that whatever you 
have, you owe it to the love of God and the 
love of your parents: your body and your 
soul. Hence, you must love God above all 
things and your parents next to Him. 

3. The greatness of marriage. — The crea- 
tion of a new man is something unusually 
important, far more so than the building of a 
house or the making of a garden. The child 
is not short-lived like an animal, but it is 
destined to live forever, a brother or sister of 
Christ, a member of the Church. It has an 
Angel for its protector, and was purchased by 
Christ's Blood. What an important thing is 
it then, when a new child is created, a human 
body is built and God breathes the soul into 
it? (The object of our repeated reference to 
the importance of man's origin is clear. We 
want to hinder the degrading of the sex life: 

[89] 



^Hbtxtatittg i® l^nxttQ 



the low view of breeding a new human being) 
(actus generandi.) This comes to pass ac- 
cording to God's will through marriage. That 
is why God Himself blessed the marriage of 
Adam and Eve, and why our Lord hallowed 
the marriage of Cana by His presence and by 
His first miracle. That is why He made 
marriage a Sacrament: The Sacraments are 
the greatest treasures our Lord left us, as 
they cost Him His life and His blood. As 
priests are prepared by Holy Orders to per- 
form their holy ministry, so married people are 
consecrated by the Sacrament of matrimony 
to fulfil their duties, that they may be fit 
instruments in God's hands to bring forth 
children. 

Therefore a lengthy preparation should pre- 
cede the state of marriage; as boys and young 
men who expect to become priests have to 
study many years and train themselves to 
virtue, so should boys and girls, who look 
forward to marriage, prepare their souls and 
bodies for years through the practice of 
purity, godliness, humility, and love of the 
neighbor. Then they can nourish the certain 
hope that God will grant them in the Sacra- 

[90] 






*U~frjtmefr ^^n^fittttt 



ment of matrimony many graces to enable 
them properly to discharge their sacred duties, 
among which is that of rearing children for 
God's kingdom. i 

4. Sexual inclination and mutual love of the 
wedded pair. — That the married people may 
better comply with their sacred duties, that 
they may get better children, raise them 
better, and that they may make themselves 
happier both in this life and in the next, God 
has endowed man and woman with many 
qualities and prerogatives of soul and body, 
chief among which is a great love which God 
put into the man's heart for the wife, and into 
the wife's heart for her husband. For just as 
any work is done more easily, when done 
with pleasure and joy; the same holds good 
with regard to the duties of married peo- 
ple : when man and wife love each other, they 
are better and happier, and their children are 
better and are brought up better. Yes, it is 
God's will and His commandment that man 
and wife shall love one another dearly; more 
than anyone else in the world must every 
man love his wife, and every wife her hus- 
band. Under pain of mortal sin God forbids 

[91] 



JGi&nt:*Hn$ l& Tf/intitQ 



man to love a strange woman like his own 
wife, and woman to love another man like 
her own husband: that would be the sin of 
adultery, marriage-breaking, as the Germans 
call it, because the marriage-bond is tampered 
with thereby. 

5. Courting. — Married people then must 
be united by a great and a strong love, else 
their marriage would not be happy; and an 
unhappy marriage is a kind of a hell. That 
such a love may exist and abide, first of all 
the grace of God is required. But also some- 
thing more. Married people must esteem 
each other. Their temperaments and char- 
acters must agree or harmonize. That is 
why people who want to marry must learn 
to know each other, and make sure if they 
suit one another, if they are virtuous and 
may hope to have a happy union. This 
preparation by which future husbands and 
wives learn to know one another, and try 
each other is called courtship. That is the 
proximate preparation for marriage. And 
just as seminarians prepare themselves for 
the priesthood by recollection, self-denial, 
and much prayer, so the time before marriage 

[92] 



Al'txaintb (§0tt&titntt 



must be spent in a holy manner. Thus they 
who become engaged should: 

(a) Pray much and perform good works to 
obtain light from God, first to find out 
whether they will be happy with one another, 
and secondly, to prepare well for the Sacrament 
of matrimony. 

(6) Strive to know each other and become 
quite certain about the future. Hence, they 
observe and watch each other closely, and 
inquire about each other of trusty persons. 
They are bound particularly to heed the 
fourth commandment, as God has attached 
special blessings to its observance. They 
should inform themselves whether they are 
good and religious, whether the girl is tidy, 
orderly, and loves home, whether she is not 
given to backbiting and slandering; whether 
the man is not rude, addicted to drink and vice. 
For all these reasons they should, before com- 
mencing to keep company, ask advice of their 
parents and at times of their pastor. So you 
see that company-keeping is allowed only 
when there is the intention and the prospect 
of marriage; besides, great prudence must be 
observed. Prudence, for love cannot exist 

[93] 



^iterating hi f ttrttg 



without esteem; when young folks are im- 
prudent and light-headed, courting easily 
leads to sin, and sin takes away mutual re- 
spect. As company-keeping is not always 
carried on properly, let me warn you: 

6. Against improper conduct. — The incli- 
nation of the sexes toward one another comes 
from God for a good end. Unfortunately, 
through original and personal sin, disorder 
has crept in. This inclination often begins 
too early and becomes too violent. Thus 
many people fall into sin, as they love one 
another before the time in such a way as 
only married folk may and must love each 
other. That is early and bad courting and 
love-making. And this is sinful, because it 
is against God's plan. I entreat you there- 
fore to put off making such acquaintances 
until you are old enough. Watch over your 
hearts, and stifle such incipient love for per- 
sons of the other sex. Avoid what may lead 
you to it. And when you are of the proper 
age, consult your parents and your confessor 
before giving your hearts to anyone. 

This is essential for your happiness. Those 
who begin and keep up courting too early, 

[94] 



AUlxaittth ^nstxtntt 



often fall into great sins, and spoil their future 
wedded happiness. God will not bless those 
who prepare for marriage by sin. And with- 
out God's blessing, a happy marriage can never 
be found. (In instructing girls, add some- 
thing about the snares of seducers.) See 
pages 26, 35, 73, etc., for the remarks on 
the dangers and safeguards of purity. And if 
circumstances warrant it, something may be 
said in the public instruction for girls of what 
is recommended for the private instruction 
(page 126). 

7. The sixth and ninth commandments. — 
God forbids young people prematurely to love 
each other like married people; the precocious 
sexual love must be curbed. Why? That 
marriage may turn out all the better. Those 
who give their hearts before the time may 
not be able to keep them after marriage. 
Therefore to protect marriage, and to protect 
the children who spring from wedlock, God 
has forbidden all impurity by the sixth and 
ninth commandments. Bodies and souls must 
grow and remain pure and strong, in order 
that from such chaste and robust parents may 
come good children. Sins of impurity have 

[95] 



^hutaling t® H^nril^ 



been and shall be severely punished by God. 
(See pages 16, 45, 65.) One may repeat here 
the previous instruction on chastity, insisting 
on the fact that the purer young folks keep 
themselves before marriage, the happier shall 
be their married life. Also, according to 
local circumstances, a strong warning may be 
given against solitary vice. Prudent cate- 
chists will easily decide what may be taken 
from the private instruction for the public 
one. (Pages 1, 2, etc.) 

8. Virginity. — (Children and especially 
school graduates must be imbued with great 
reverence for the state of virginity, because 
this belongs to the spirit of faith, and because 
the vocations to that state, if any, must be 
roused, and also because such as are not 
called to it will derive thence a support to 
observe chastity according to their state of 
life.) Catechists must define the state of vir- 
ginity: Lifelong chastity with renunciation of 
marriage. Some married people remained 
virgins: Joseph's and Mary's example in this 
respect has been followed by some pious Chris- 
tians. How sublime is this state of virginity 
we learn from the example of our Lord and 

[96] 



tU~txaintb (fytmstitntt 



His Holy Mother and from Jesus' predilec- 
tion for virgins (Joseph, John); from the 
praises Christ and the Apostles bestowed on 
virginity. (1. Cor. vii.) The reasons are: 
The unmarried can devote themselves alto- 
gether to God and holy things; thus some 
individuals following secular careers prefer the 
life of celibacy the better to exercise their 
profession when it requires hard duties and 
sacrifices. Wedded folk reap many blessings 
from those who live as virgins in the service 
of the Church! Priests and religious orders 
train the children to piety and fit them for 
Heaven, and thereby the family life is made 
holy. Hence virgins become spiritual fathers 
and mothers, and thus raise more children 
for God than if they were married. Also the 
virginal life of priests, religious, etc., encour- 
ages the other people to observe, notwith- 
standing all difficulties, at least the chastity 
compatible with their state of life; hence 
order, fidelity, and higher aspirations are pro- 
moted in families, and richer blessings secured. 
Thus virginity sheds blessings on the whole 
of mankind. How many priests, monks, nuns, 
and lay virgins fervently and lovingly devote 

[97] 



J£ir*tmHtu$ In |Jtt:rifcjt 



and consecrate their lives to the welfare of 
their fellow-men. Therefore let those who are 
called to this state thank God for their voca- 
tion and faithfully preserve this grace. 

Additional Remarks. — After this instruc- 
tion may follow the explanation of the cate- 
chism lesson. The pertinent questions will 
now be better understood and remembered. 
As the whole of this is but a sketch, this 
instruction may be completed by the aid 
of good catechism commentaries. Warnings 
against mixed marriages should be woven in. 

Tacitus' tribute to the chastity of the 
ancient Germans may be quoted: " Stringent 
and lofty is their view of marriage. None of 
their customs deserves more praise. They are 
about the only foreign people who cling to 
monogamy (unity of marriage). Thus women 
live, shielded by chastity, free from the en- 
ticements of theatrical representations and 
luxuriant dinner-parties. Adultery is ex- 
tremely rare among this large population; 
both husbands and kindred punish it. The 
man drives his stripped wife from the house 
in the presence of the relatives, and whips her 
through the whole village. No excuse can be 

[98] 



Al~lxainth (§®n&€ttn€t 



found for the sacrifice of modesty: neither 
beauty, nor youth, nor riches avail the fallen 
girl to obtain a husband. For there no one 
makes light of vice, and seducing and seduc- 
tion are by no means fashionable. Good 
morals accomplish more there than laws else- 
where/ ' 

7. Private Instructing 

A General Rules 

1. Class-teaching is necessarily limited; a 
great deal can be said only in private. Man's 
origin from the moment of his conception 
should be thoroughly explained. The proper 
time for this instruction shall be discussed 
further on. But the fact is that it must be 
given some day, no matter how hard it may 
seem. For there is no province in man's life, 
where reckless and thoughtless action or 
omission is wreaked in so tragic and inexor- 
able a manner, by physical injury to self and 
others, as the domain of things sexual. 

Foerster summarizes well the consequences 
of the unfortunately common mistake of 
leaving young people to chance in a most 

[99] 



^bmtaUn$ hi ^nxxt^ 



dangerous matter. They obtain their first 
introduction to a realm in which the whole 
of man's happiness depends on the spirit- 
ualizing of the life of instinct from the foul- 
est sources, unseemly conversations, books, 
and lascivious curiosity; hence their growing 
inclinations are fed on the basest senti- 
ments and phantasms; they brood on pleas- 
ures derived from filthy secret practices and 
from selfish indulgence. Some fancy that 
this pedagogical neglect of years can be 
made good by a parting exhortation when 
the son leaves home, and is expected to 
resist temptations abroad through informa- 
tion gathered from all possible dark corners 
where only an enlightened conscience will 
avail. The worst result of this stolen in- 
formation is that boys gradually settle 
down to the conviction that the sexual 
life has but personal pleasure for its object. 
No wonder that their warped opinion is 
made to subserve short-sighted passion. 
Later when higher aspects and responsibilities 
dawn upon them, they have no more control- 
ling power: sensuality has taken the upper 
hand and successfully meets and dominates 

[100] 



tll~ttainth (E&n&zitntt 



the spirit by its home-made philosophy. Thus 
grown up men who, while they are good-hearted 
and conscientious in ordinary life, altogether 
mistake human happiness and dignity with 
regard to the sexual life, and they look upon 
marriage as an institution intended for selfish 
gratification of lust without realizing its true 
obligations. 

2. Our method of teaching is quite different 
from the unreserved enlightenment which we 
mentioned and condemned. The following 
principles will make this clear: 

(a) Right teaching has the following aim: 
To bring before children, as soon as they 
become conscious of things sexual, the high 
moral significance and responsibility con- 
nected therewith. Therefore it is impera- 
tive, above all, that the teachers be filled with 
the right spirit, and they are bound to make 
their wards share their own views. From 
this preponderance of the moral aspects fol- 
lows that only the essential phase of sexual 
physiology is clearly explained, as it would 
otherwise be impossible to treat the moral 
and religious side; furthermore, an accurate 
explanation being once given, there is no 

[101] 



l^tttttBttij Iff Ij^tttilQ 



more need of returning to the subject time 
and again. 

It would be wrong to take such a view of 
its moral significance as if one should be 
continually engrossed with this question. A 
quiet, earnest instruction will best forestall 
this illusion, whereas it is precisely dark sus- 
picions and improper experience that wrap 
this matter in a mysterious cloak and wield a 
fascinating power on sensuality. Foerster's 
observation is excellent: The easiest way to 
ward off attention from the merely physiolog- 
ical is to treat the consideration of the physio- 
logical side as something subordinate, as the 
mere foundation of the higher point of view. 
The physical act is left in the background as 
the simple scaffolding on which rational man 
erects a lofty edifice of love and fidelity. 

(6) As the uplifting moral views must ever 
be kept to the fore, but very little should be 
said of the likenesses between the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms. We have pointed out 
the differences between the propagation of 
man and other living beings. (Pages 78, 86.) 

A great many popular treatises on natural 
philosophy, partly adapted to youth, end- 

[102] 



^tiUtxainth (§&n&titntt 

lessly exalt processes of nature and praise the 
wonderful laws affecting the fertilization and 
propagation of the organic world. Such ob- 
ject-lessons present the serious danger of 
deceiving the young into believing that outer 
nature is the pattern for the moral wants of 
rational man, whereas it is in constant con- 
flict with the higher needs of the soul. 

(c) A capital blunder advocates of the 
exaggerated enlightenment perpetrate is pro- 
moting mere knowledge. Right teaching on 
the contrary holds that knowledge of sexual 
matters only begets evil, unless conscience is 
simultaneously aroused, and efforts are put 
forth to train the will and the mind, aye, 
unless such training has previously been given. 
The whole harm of a too early acquaintance 
with things sexual lies in the fact that the 
undisciplined will lacks strength to resist the 
excitement. The inefficiency of bare knowl- 
edge is proved, e.g., by the appalling statistics 
of the sexual pest among the most cultured. 
Late accounts hailing from Berlin quote 9% 
among working people and 25% among uni- 
versity students! 

(d) Besides, it is easy to understand that 

[103] 



r&f* 



'QJbntaixng iu l^nxH^ 



the character of a private instruction obviates 
many inconveniences inseparable from class- 
teaching. Individual private tutoring only 
can ascertain just how much information is 
necessary and profitable for the child. It 
alone also can find out the right kind, and 
thereupon depends the result of the teach- 
ing. Though the time of physical maturity 
(puberty) may be generally assigned as the 
proper age to receive such information, local 
circumstances alter cases (see page 95) ; hence 
some may require earlier forewarning. 

3. The last given rule, that the young can 
be fully taught only in private, naturally 
points to the best teachers, namely the par- 
ents. They know their children, and those 
among them who neglect this duty, must be 
reminded of it. Let catechists not forget 
that this burden rests upon parents. Hence 
much of the following direction is meant 
chiefly for them. Only in case of the latter's 
incapacity, other educators must step in. 
Prudence will advise priests and catechists to 
admonish parents of this obligation, and to 
help them with their counsels. Should par- 
ents prove heedless, let them come to an 

[104] 



tlt-ttxtintb (Qxmstitntt 

understanding with them, before under- 
taking this work. In Catholic communities 
there is less danger of failure and misap- 
prehension, as good Christian parents often 
bring their children to their confessors (pas- 
tors) for instruction, or, at least, are grateful 
when the latter relieve them of this task. 
At all events, priests must proceed with the 
greatest tact, as the slightest impropriety 
renders them liable to misunderstanding, 
aye to grave suspicion. Even in the con- 
fessional, such an instruction, in so far as it 
is necessary, may be imparted only with the 
greatest carefulness. The catechist's age also 
will determine his freer or more reserved 
speech. Withal, an earnest, well-meant lesson 
from those called to give it, even though it 
were not quite faultless, is always preferable 
to the information children might draw from 
unclean fountains. Foerster maintains that 
the crudest teaching of parents is better than 
silence, as silence is equivalent to drinking in 
street-infection. In any case, parents, tutors, 
and educators are generally too afraid of duly 
instructing their offspring. 

One decisive reason why we combat the 
[105] 



^EtatraBttg in IffnxitQ 



wrong enlightenment is its connection with 
the movement that would favor adults with 
the blessing of "free-love," and would thus 
also prepare children to give free reign to 
their passions. 

B. Private Instructing 

With a steady eye on the general rules given 
above, especially under 2 (d) and 3, and of 
that mentioned in Chapter 1 about local and 
individual differences, about those called to give 
this teaching and the right spirit of the edu- 
cator, the tutor may proceed as follows: 

(a) Those children who have received a 
thoroughly sound and well-regulated educa- 
tion (alack! such are rare nowadays) , upon 
asking whence babies come, might be put off 
with the answer, "From God/' and with the 
hope of obtaining later a fuller explanation. 
As a rule, however, to anticipate unbecoming 
enlightenment, it will be advisable to satisfy 
somewhat the inquirers' curiosity. We don't 
mean by that detailed information which is 
to be given to those well-nigh sexually mature, 
but by an incomplete one. It tells the child 
that babes come from their mothers; the 

[106] 



tllAxtLintb (^tm&titntt 



paternity is hinted at somewhat as follows: 
Man, who by his soul is like the Angels 
and by his body like the animals, comes 
from God and also from his parents; the soul 
from God, and the body both from God 
and from father and mother. 

Nothing is said as to how man originates; 
still the mother may quietly tell her child, 
albeit in the lowest grades of school: My 
darling, I bore you long, nine months, under 
my heart, in my body; this has caused me 
much anxiety; I thought of you nearly all the 
time and prayed much for you; then I brought 
you into the world with intense pain. The 
Blessed Virgin also carried the Child Jesus in 
her womb; that is why we pray: Blessed is 
the Fruit of thy womb. (Thus are quite 
removed all the difficulties of the gospel 
text Luke i. 41, about Mary's visitation to 
Elizabeth.) 

More pressing questions, if any, can be 
answered in the words of the mother of the 
Machabees : " I know not how you were formed 
in my womb; for I neither gave you breath 
nor soul nor life, neither did I frame the 
limbs of every one of you. But the Creator 

[107] 



^kutating in ^sttilg 



of the world, who formed the nativity of 
man." (2. Mach. vii. 22, 23.) 

But when children's further questioning 
and way of acting betray a fuller acquaintance 
with things sexual than befits their ages, or 
when they are exposed to serious dangers, and 
withal close to puberty, the matter must be 
unfolded more, somewhat as in the following 
sketch. 

(6) The more complete instruction, neces- 
sary for the time of puberty, is more difficult 
(not so much because of the thing itself, as 
because of our modern defective general edu- 
cation). A delicate tact and a careful atten- 
tion to actual circumstances shall determine 
the suitable form and words. Better general 
directions than the following we can scarcely 
suggest : As soon as either outward signs point 
to sexual maturity (reserve, a certain bashful- 
ness, sentimentality in boys, unrest and excit- 
ability in girls; a definite time concerning this 
sexual development cannot be stated, as it 
varies from the thirteenth to the twentieth 
year. Puberty signifies not only the dawn of 
sexual maturity, but the general transforma- 
tion of the whole body. Hence also peculiar 

[108] 



til-ttaintb ty&nstittttt 

psychic changes take place at this time), or 
rather (parents and tutors should foster this 
intimacy), when the child — who consults his 
God-given protectors also about his bodily 
experiences — makes confidences which point 
to the advent of puberty, the suitable instruc- 
tion should not be delayed. 

The children's trust in their parents and 
tutors is taken for granted. The best way 
parents or guardians can win this confidence 
is by candidly giving their children from their 
early age any information befitting their years 
and understanding, and by not curtly evading 
their questions, but by answering them lov- 
ingly, and thus accustoming them to expose 
to their parents also their physical condition. 

Sketch of the more complete private instruc- 
tion for the time of puberty. — At times young 
people, girls especially, seem afraid of and 
troubled about receiving this instruction. 
Therefore, 

1. It may be good to open it thus: You 
must not get uneasy at what I am about to 
tell you concerning marriage and the origin 
of children. It is good fully to know these 
things. Think of the Mother of God; that 

[109] 



^Zhneating iff ^nxti^ 



she knew all about this is clear from her con- 
versation with the Archangel Gabriel, when 
he brought her the message that she was 
chosen to be the Mother of our Savior. Thus 
you see that good boys (good girls) may and 
should know this. (Insert here what was 
said for the class-teaching on marriage, page 
79, etc.) 

2. As, agreeably to God's designs, father 
and mother must cooperate in forming the 
human body, God has created man's body 
different from woman's. Hence, some mem- 
bers of man's body are unlike woman's: the 
private parts or sexual organs. In these are 
found with men and women the life-germs, 
from whose union springs the babe's little 
body. These life-germs are called seed, as 
with the plants, in man; in woman they are 
called eggs. 

3. To bring a child into existence, an 
intimate union of the parents' bodies is re- 
quired. Heed well, darling, why God has 
ordained it so. Man's creation is a work of 
God's love. As God is good and full of love, 
He wants more and more men to come into 
existence, and to make them happy in this 

[110] 



life and in the next. Therefore, Love must 
prompt parents to work along with God. 
What a privilege is it for parents to be per- 
mitted to work with God. That is why when 
parents are about to bring a child into life 
with God's help, they must intimately and 
lovingly embrace each other. 1 And in that 

1 What is in parentheses might also be said in the boys' 
and girls' separate classes. (It could be inserted at para- 
graph (e) p. 77.) But the danger of the scandalum pusil- 
lorum et pharisacicum of some parents, teachers, or of the 
wrongly educated public, make it generally necessary not to 
mention this in the class-teaching. Some readers of the first 
edition took exception to the word "embrace." But it 
should be observed: 

(a) The end we seek to compass with this Scriptural 
expression is that the exercise of the marital rights (copula 
maritalis) be deemed good and holy, not bad (res inhonesta) 
or degrading. The unworthy view of it — though practi- 
cally quite prevalent — is false, and opposed to Christian 
morality. (Read, e.g., the Twelfth Homily of St. John 
Chrysostom, on the Epistle to the Colossians, quoted above: 
"Erunt duo in una carne; hoc enim facit coitus: confundit 
et commiscet amborum corpora, et sicut qui in oleum injecit 
unguentum, totum facit unum: ita hie quoque . . . Quid te 
pudet ejus quod est honorabile? quid erubescis ob id quod 
est immaculatum? Haec sunt haereticorum . . . Propterea 
volo ipsum expurgare matrimonium, ut reducam ad suam 
nobilitatem, ut obturem ora haereticorum." Thus spoke the 
Saint in the pulpit. The union of the unmarried, as well as 
the adulterous one, is indeed something shameful and base; 
not so the lawful one. Though the physical act is the same, 
the moral significance is infinitely different, as is also the 

[in] 



^Ehnetiiing ia fnvitQ 






embrace life-germs out of the father's body- 
must be united to life-germs in the mother's 
body. Therefore, you are the child of my 
love, of the love of your father and mother! 
Then, if God so will it, for everything depends 
on His will — comes into existence the infant's 

case in other matters. When a robber shoots, he is guilty 
of a contemptible and a criminal act; whereas when a soldier 
shoots in a lawful war, his act is good and praiseworthy. 
Much stress must be laid on this: the boundless difference 
of an act, according as it corresponds to God's will and to 
the moral order, or runs counter to them. Hence, by the 
way, it appears imprudent to inquire in the confessional 
when there is question of fornication: "Did you act as in 
marriage?" 

(6) What do we aim at by using the term embrace? 
How will it really affect children? To ascertain this, we 
must note what representation even children — not others, 
adults — will connect with that expression. The former 
are either enlightened about the process or not; if they are, 
they are either fully so or only partly. If they know all 
about it, that term gives them a higher conception of the 
procreation of children — quite different from the one heard 
of on the streets, which scarcely rises above that of animals. 
If they are but partly acquainted with the process, that 
name teaches them nothing new, but they learn to look 
upon it as something nobler. Should they still be totally 
ignorant, the first noble view they get of the physical process 
prepares them for the later fuller information, and when they 
become quite initiated into the fact, either through their own 
observation (with animals, for instance), that low street- 
conception of it will not so much affect their ideas and their 
respect for their parents. 

[112] 



little body, and God breathes into it an 
immortal soul. 1 The little body grows in the 
mother's body for nine months through the 
mother's blood, till it becomes strong enough 
to live by itself. See, my child, what mother 
gave you: already before you were born, she 
fed your little body with her own blood. 
Then after nine months the little child comes 
into the world from the mother's body; it is 
born. This often causes the mother great 
and intense pains. Your mother suffered 
thus for you too. You are the child of her 
sorrows. After birth, infants need a special 
nourishment : therefore God has so ordained it 
that milk forms in the breast of mothers 
who have babes. That is why mothers nurse 
their little ones — the sucklings — for weeks 
and months. Mothers do that with great 
love and a pious mother, while doing it, prays 
for her infant, and wishes it all kinds of bless- 
ings. Thus, my dear, you have sucked in 
with your mother's milk many good qualities 
of your soul. 

1 As a rule, the physical process should not be described 
more particularly. Needless to say that, before marrying, 
young couples should be fully informed either by the mother 
or a good doctor. 

[113] 



T&hnt&Ung t& Thurify 



What I told you so far is mostly such a 
sacred thing, that even the Child Jesus chose 
thus to come into the world. Indeed, His 
body was fashioned miraculously in His 
Mother's womb; for our Savior had, as you 
know, no human father. St. Joseph was 
simply His foster-father. To the Incarnation 
of our Redeemer no man cooperated; the 
Holy Ghost, through His Divine power, 
created the Child's little body and soul in 
Mary's womb. But, after that (act of the 
Holy Ghost), Jesus' little body grew in His 
Mother's womb, as your body did in your 
mother's. And He was born after Mary bore 
Him nine months. His birth also was mirac- 
ulous. The Divine Child caused His Mother 
no pain at all (as you caused your mother), 
but the Christ-Child issued from His Mother's 
womb as later He came from the grave, with- 
out hurting His Mother, as the sun's rays 
come through the glass without injuring it. 
Then Mary lovingly nursed the Child Jesus 
with her milk until He got strong and big, 
and ate other food. 

What should you learn from all this I have 
told you? 

[114] 






(a) Great gratitude and love for your 
parents, especially for your mother, whose 
body was the holy tabernacle in which God 
gave you life, growth, and strength; to whom 
you cost many days and nights of pain and 
anxiety. Therefore the Holy Ghost warns 
you through the Bible: My child, forget not 
the groanings of thy mother (Ecclus. vii. 29) 
who bore thee; honor her, also; when she is old 
and feeble. 

(6) You must have great respect for your 
body. See how God, your father and your 
mother, all worked together to make this 
body, and how they have been fashioning it 
for months and for years, and that with much 
fatigue and hardship until the little house of 
your soul was ready; and in your Baptism 
you received a still much greater Guest, the 
Holy Ghost : Your body has become the temple 
of the Holy Ghost. (1. Cor. vi. 19.) There- 
fore you must respect your body, love it the 
right way, and care for it; you must not 
lightly injure your health, nor waste your 
physical strength. Above all, it would be a 
great crime to desecrate your body through 
impurity. I will explain this further. 

[115] 



^Eibttf&Hng ha fisritg 



4. You have ceased to be a child. You 
are now entering upon your manhood (woman- 
hood), i.e., you are now becoming able (if 
God should call you thereto) to bring forth 
children yourself. At this age a great danger 
threatens you; it is like a serpent that lures 
so many to death. I have to call your atten- 
tion to that danger now, and to warn you with 
all my heart against it. May our dear Lord 
direct and strengthen my words! Perhaps 
you heard from others or experienced yourself 
(maybe when half asleep) that, by handling 
the private parts (sex organs), you can cause 
a certain pleasure. That is where the danger 
lies. Many young folks deliberately seek to 
procure that pleasure, not being aware how 
very wrong they act. Here is the poisonous 
serpent which you must flee from; for, re- 
member, my child, that to procure such 
pleasure by manipulating the sexual parts is 
a grievous sin, whereby your body, the temple 
of God, is desecrated and defiled. 

Did you ever hear anything about the dese- 
cration or defilement of a church? A church, 
as you know, is (generally) consecrated. To 
do this the bishop prayed, blessed, and 

[116] 



tlt-tvaintb ty&nmeitntt 

anointed for hours. Now, when a great 
crime, e.g., a murder or a public grievous sin 
of impurity is perpetrated in a church, the 
church is thereby desecrated, defiled. It has 
to be closed; the bells are no longer rung, the 
altars and pictures are covered; no Mass or 
service can be held in it, the Blessed Sacra- 
ment is carried out; and things remain so 
until the bishop, or a priest, empowered by 
him, purifies the church from that defilement 
with solemn prayers and ceremonies. A still 
more horrible thing would happen if you 
should defile your body by such a sin. Your 
body is more than a house of brick or stone; 
it is a living temple of God. "No greater or 
holier sanctury can be found on earth than a 
pure body and an unstained soul." (Angelus 
Silesius.) Now, by treating that sanctuary 
in such an immodest way, you would defile 
this temple of your body; the Angels 
would cover their heads with grief, and the 
Holy Ghost would depart from that temple. 

Besides, perhaps your body may some day 
become instrumental in raising children. 
(With girls: may become the holy vessel to 
bring forth children.) Probably God calls 

[117] 






y&hntaling in ^ttritQ 



you to become a father (a mother). There- 
fore you should keep your body healthy and 
pure, and not weaken nor defile it by abuse 
in your youth. Whoso abuses his body per- 
petrates a crime also against the future men. 
Not only wicked against God and against 
men is this sin, but it also injures those 
who commit it. Believe me, you will ex- 
perience the harm of self-abuse later; your 
happiness is at stake. There can be no true 
happiness anywhere where the conscience is 
not at peace and the heart pure; but this sin, 
when people don't resist it from the beginning, 
puts fetters on them from which they can 
scarcely, if at all, free themselves. How 
many young people have lost peace of soul 
and made their own, their wives', and chil- 
dren's lives miserable and wretched through 
this sin. This is indeed the sin which brings 
people to the chambers of death. (Prov. vii. 
27.) (Parents and guardians may, according to 
circumstances, describe how bodily health and 
strength are undermined by repeated excite- 
ment of the reproductive organs and by the 
loss of the seed, and how this vile practise 
especially hurts bodies just maturing. Other 

[118] 



natural and supernatural motives can be set 
forth. (See page 51.) Young people must 
be protected by word and deed from gloomy 
dreaming and all melancholy). (Conclude:) 
You must remember it is this wilful, not 
the accidental pleasure, that is sinful; should 
this happen without any fault of yours, 
during sleep, e.g., it will be no sin, if you 
take no deliberate pleasure in it, and turn 
at once to God, to the Blessed Virgin, and 
to your Guardian Angel. Accustom yourself 
to go to sleep while praying, saying your 
beads. Have your rosary around your neck 
or your arms, then you need not fear. 

5. But why did God put in man's body the 
capacity of physical enjoyment if this may 
become sinful? This again shows God's wis- 
dom and goodness. ? T will help you better 
to understand the sixth commandment. God 
is good; He does not put upon us burdens we 
can scarcely bear if at all. He wants to 
make our burdens easy by the joy which He 
attaches to the courageous bearing thereof. 
Accordingly, fulfilling our duties brings joy 
of soul and peace. Recall how when you 
overcame pride, curiosity, or anger, made a 

[119] 



jhtroHtt$ i& yfuxi%Q 



good confession, opened your heart to your 
parents, made a sacrifice to God, you felt joy 
in your heart and indescribable satisfaction. 
That comes from God; it is the honey where- 
with He sweetens the bitterness of His pre- 
cepts. To many commandments God has 
attached a bodily satisfaction or pleasure. 
Were it not for the pleasure we feel, for 
instance, in eating and drinking, it would be 
unpleasant and hard to provide for our sup- 
port. How we must talk to a sick man, who 
has no appetite, no more pleasure in eating, 
to make him take some nourishment! By 
attaching enjoyment to eating and drinking, 
God has made it unnecessary to give the 
special order, "You shall eat and drink to 
keep up your strength." The same holds 
good with regard to the sexual pleasure. 
The marriage duty has for its object to pro- 
vide for the propagation of mankind. That 
people may love to perform this duty God has 
annexed many joys to the wedded life. These 
joys come especially from the mutual love of 
the married people, and from their good and 
well-behaved children, as also from the mental 
and sensual joys of the marital embrace. God 

[120] 



tiUltainth ^anstttntt 



thereby sweetens the obligations of married 
people. And thus, as with regard to the duty 
of keeping up life, so with regard to this 
injunction of propagating mankind, God 
needed not proclaim the special law: " People 
shall marry that mankind may not die out." 
The joys of marriage ever lure enough people 
to insure the propagation of mankind. Think 
over it: were married life not pleasant, but 
sad and irksome, how few people would wed 
and take upon themselves the heavy burdens 
of marrying and bringing forth children. 

6. Now you understand the sixth and 
ninth commandments better. If God had 
not limited these pleasures to marriage, 
many people would seek them before the 
time, and thus hurt their bodies; and if these 
joys were lawful outside of marriage, thou- 
sands would not marry at all, to evade the 
burdens thereof. So, God forbids people to 
have the sexual pleasure out of marriage by 
the sixth and ninth commandments. So you 
would sin mortally by seeking or desiring 
(coveting) that pleasure, or giving yourself 
over to it. 

You see now why God made it a great 
[121] 



ffihrrtttmg tu ^ntil^ 



sin to break those commandments. People 
are not uneasy about rules which oblige only 
under venial sin. Even this way people 
break the sixth commandment, how much 
worse would it be, were there not so severe a 
penalty attached to the breaking thereof. 
This commandment safeguards the existence 
and the w^ell-being of future generations. 
Everjr sin against the sixth commandment is 
generally a drop of poison poured into the 
spring from which future men are to flow. 

(Remember it is the wilful handling of the 
sex member or procuring of the pleasure that 
is sinful. What is done for cleanliness or to 
remove pain or itch is no sin.) 

7. Warning against danger and exhorting 
to adopt safeguards will be comparatively 
easy to the conscientious educator. Circum- 
stances must be considered. Denounce as 
dangerous, idleness, effeminacy, unrestrained 
curiosity, dreaming, sentimental reading, bad 
company, early love-making, despondency, 
and melancholy. Recommend frequent Com- 
munion, prayer, daily consecration to the 
Blessed Virgin (page 36), regular habits, early 
retiring and early rising, steeling the body 

[122] 



tit-ixaittth (CvxtBtitntt 



through hard work, denying one's self many 
(even lawful) things (sweets, smoking), brid- 
ling curiosity. You are the maker of your 
own happiness. You are now building your 
own mansion or hovel. If you wish to be 
happy, keep your body and your heart pure. 
(Comp. pages 22, 25, 35, and 74, 75.) 

8. (Also in the private instruction, prudent 
reference should be made to the state of per- 
fection.) For some young persons there is 
another way to a still higher happiness: the 
state of virginity. (See page 96.) 

9. A great deal is special to each sex. 

A. For youths. — At your age, it happens 
that the seed runs out during sleep. If you 
have not caused this by dwelling on impure 
thoughts, 1 you need not be uneasy about it, 
even if you should experience pleasure in a 
dream, or when half awake. You are growing 
into manhood, getting stronger physically and 
mentally. Man is mostly superior in body 
and in mind to woman. Unfortunately many 
youths and men abuse this superiority to the 
injury of the honor and purity of girls and 
women. It is not for that purpose that God 

1 Proviso inserted by T. 
[123] 



JUbiitaling In f ttrtig 



gave us men greater intellectual and physical 
strength. Think how respectfully you should 
behave towards girls and women. They are 
sisters of the Blessed Virgin. Don't you 
remember how we owe our Savior to the 
holiest maiden and woman, Mary? There- 
fore you should honor women: Protect them 
against all rudeness; and never become guilty 
of a dishonorable act towards a girl or woman 
even of inferior rank. Listen to Henry Suso: 
"One day as I was walking on a narrow lane 
through the fields, I met a woman. When 
she got close to me, I stepped off the dry 
path into the mud, and let her pass. There- 
upon the woman looking back said: 'Dear sir, 
why do you, prominent man and priest as 
you are, get out of my way? 'Twould have 
been more becoming for me to show you such 
an honor.' I answered: 'Dear woman, I am 
wont to show all women respect and reverence 
for the sake of the Blessed Mother of God 
in Heaven.'" 

God has given you strength to help the 
weak and the timid. Later you will need all 
your superior vigor and courage to rule a 
family as its head and father, or to promote 

[124] 



tlUtxaintb (§0tt&£ittttt 

the welfare of the community. Then you 
will be happy and make others happy when 
you have learned rightly to employ your 
strength and to ennoble it by meekness, 
considerateness, and love. So be gentle and 
kind to all girls and women, even to the very 
poorest. 

B. For girls. — (Mothers should give this 
instruction whenever possible.) 

(a) This could be connected with remarks 
made on page 117, etc.; at all events, it should 
not be deferred until the menses have caused 
trouble and anxiety. At your age, the fol- 
lowing happens to girls: Every four weeks an 
egg of the life-germs becomes ripe, and flows 
off with the blood. Don't let this frighten 
you, it is nothing bad or dangerous. It is 
but a sign that God has made you capable 
of becoming a mother, if it be His holy will. 
Don't be uneasy: if you feel excitable or 
despondent at your menstruation, you thus 
have an occasion to exercise patience. This 
is a good preparation for future happiness. 
Only strive to be more careful during your 
monthlies, not to over-exert yourself nor to 
take cold, and be very cleanly. Should any- 

[125] 



^EbntaHng l& |fttyifc$* 



thing further trouble you, just ask me (or my 
representative) about it. For the rest, it 
would be unbecoming to talk much about this 
to others, or to draw attention thereto. 

(6) Pitfalls and ways to escape them. — A 
very dangerous defect for girls is vanity. By 
it they grow fond of flattery, which acts fas- 
cinatingly on them. The first woman, Eve, 
fell a victim to flattery. Credulity would 
likewise be dangerous to you. Don't readily 
believe the young man who speaks to you of 
love and of marriage. (Much stress must be 
laid upon this, and girls are to be strongly 
cautioned against entering into relations with 
men before having first asked their parents' 
or their pastors' advice. Even apparently 
honorable men, especially after drinking, suffer 
their passions to drive them into robbing 
innocent girls of their honor.) Beware of 
trusting yourself alone in the company of 
men. Many a maiden has wept for years 
over one hour's familiarity: they forfeited 
their virtue, their greatest treasure! They 
became ill through it, or their life's happiness 
was nipped in the bud. (In some places there 
will be need of still plainer language and of 

[126] 



Axaittth (Q&n&txtvitt 



warning against the infection of syphilis.) 
Therefore consult your parents, before keep- 
ing company. They will never hinder your 
true welfare, but if you should step to the 
brink of a precipice, they would, of course, 
have to put you on your guard. Timidity is 
also dangerous. By it girls are afraid scorn- 
fully to reject improper advances, through 
fear of thereby displeasing men and of losing 
opportunities to marry. Consequently, girls 
should be trained to greater independence. 
They ought to be told thait good men, upon 
seeing how firmly maidens resist their entice- 
ments held out in the heat of passion, 
realize what faithful wives such determined 
girls will make. Besides, God will bless you 
when you remain perfectly faithful to Him, 
and He will bring you to a happy marriage, 
if such is your vocation. A specially impor- 
tant rule of prudence for girls is: "Noli me 
tangere" (Touch me not). Let them keep 
men at a respectable distance, and by no 
means permit them to touch them, save where 
reason demands it. To this effect no extraor- 
dinary strength of character is required, if 
girls are educated to modesty, that reserve so 

[127] 



^Ebntaiin^ tu ynriig 



becoming to them, which is altogether differ- 
ent, however, from the bashfulness referred 
to above. 

(c) As counterpart of the boys' chivalrous 
character, motherliness should be cultivated in 
girls by training and efficient direction, i.e., 
kindness, devotedness, humility, and self- 
sacrificing love, which are the natural traits 
of the noble, genuinely Christian mother. 
The fertile well-spring of woman's activity in 
the family — and in every womanly sphere — 
is motherly love. Women richly dowered 
with these motherly qualities are a blessing 
to all around them, and from their unselfish 
love gushes an overflow of content and happi- 
ness upon their own souls. God has put in 
girls' hearts a disposition to motherly senti- 
ments. These both parents and tutors are 
obliged to foster by directing girls to seize 
every opportunity to practise that love. The 
unspeakably sad off-shoots of the largely 
justifiable women's movement and the wild 
views on motherhood are mostly traceable to 
the neglect of educating girls to motherliness. 

10. Many girls, grown up pious but igno- 
rant in this respect, look upon the method of 

[128] 



tll~txaintb (§&n&tittitt 



propagation itself (not merely the abuse 
thereof), and especially upon the marital 
embrace, as something unworthy and low, not 
to say vulgar. Such can be set right as fol- 
lows: In this Divine ordinance, the Creator 
displays His wisdom and goodness. The 
bond of affection and love between married 
people was to be tightened. As man is com- 
posed of body and soul, his love cannot be in 
perfect harmony with his nature, when it is 
simply intellectual. Perfect human love is 
both spiritual and material. Hence the per- 
fect demonstrations thereof are likewise both 
mental and bodily, naturally, with due sub- 
ordination of the material to the spiritual, 
according to reason and faith. This is exem- 
plified particularly in the most intimate 
relation of love, in marriage. Wedded folk 
should melt into one soul, not only through 
spiritual love, but they must also become one 
bodily; marital commerce constantly renews 
and stimulates that mutual love. Thus a 
strong tie would be lacking but for the act of 
propagation. 

11. Why do we speak of wicked pleasure 
though sexual lust is something natural, i.e., 

[129] 



^Ebntaling la H^nxtlQ 



comes from God's ordinance? Not because 
lust is bad in itself; no, for it has a great and 
noble end (see page 119); but because in 
consequence of sin, original sin especially, it 
becomes inordinate and occasions much 
wickedness; it is the source of a flood of 
transgressions of the Divine law, chiefly of 
the sixth commandment. 

8. Important Final Remarks on the 
Instruction 

The foregoing directions may possibly give 
our readers the impression that these sexual 
teachings must occupy much room in the 
general education. The fact is this: if parents 
and tutors educate rightly whatever refers to 
impurity, and to the prevention thereof, can 
be taught very briefly, and thus a great 
advantage will be secured for the sexual 
training, that is, to save children the impres- 
sion that this is a question wherewith man 
should be continually engrossed. Precisely to 
compass this boon, it is necessary to proceed 
in such a way as to leave no room for doubt 
or error. To lend assistance to this work, 
we could not perform our task in too concise 

[130] 



a manner, and we had to set forth repeatedly 
the more important principles. 

Needless to say that everything should not 
be told at once nor at the same age. Thus, 
for instance, only the older boys and girls 
should be informed of the object of the sexual 
pleasure. But we should expatiate more on 
the beauty, sublimity, and the lifelong advan- 
tages of the positive virtue of purity as well as 
on the high moral significance of married life. 
Foerster's " Jugendlehre " (Instruction for 
Youth) and " Lebensf uhrung " (Life-Guide) 
will furnish teachers and educators material 
help for school pupils and for youths and 
maidens. The final result, however, must 
be borne in mind, i.e., the preventive and 
preservative power of religion regarding the 
sex life is so fundamental and so indispensable 
that it is simply impossible to live continently 
and to overcome strong temptations (except 
in rare individual cases) without religious 
education and its uplifting influence. To 
that effect, edifying books, such as those 
quoted on page 53, will be most useful. We 
confidently conclude our treatment of the 
sexual enlightenment with this sentence: Im- 

[131] 



^£hnt*Hng l& l^ntitig 



periled young folk may expect a double ad- 
vantage from the right sexual instruction: 
They will not so easily become addicted to 
vice; and secondly, they will not forfeit their 
gladness and at last their innocence through 
anxieties and scruples which are the necessary 
outcome of false and rigoristic views of things 
sexual. The very educators will also greatly 
profit thereby: The conscientiousness of their 
duty toward children will constrain them 
personally to lift the sexual life to a higher 
plane, and thus, to acquire the right spirit. 
Accordingly, in a certain sense, the child 
will become his tutor's educator. Nearly all 
requirements of the educator's profession 
(says Foerster) withdraw man from the world, 
as it really is, into the world as it ought to 
be; the educator's calling is a constant sum- 
mons to enter into one's better self and to 
grow to the highest conscientiousness. Chil- 
dren act on the not altogether hardened heart 
of man like Easter-bells which bid man's 
heart and mind rise heavenward. 




[132] 



w*3 ft {7 (( o? <A > \ w J/fi* 



VI. <$» % flfcr* a£ Spta** ^bhitUh t* ^utfnriiq 

Even regardless of the special dangers of 
our times, and notwithstanding the educator's 
greatest carefulness, it will be impossible to 
hinder all sin. Therefore it is necessary to 
say a few words about the means parents, 
catechists, and teachers must adopt to root 
out the vice, if it should have taken possession 
of the child's heart. 

1. To cure those children who have this sin- 
ful habit, the educator must first of all be 
certain of the existence of the evil. 

(a) To become aware of this, the prudent 
watchfulness, we spoke of, will avail much. 
He must be cautious and not yield to false 
certainty; yet, on the other hand, let him not 
be over-zealous in his investigation nor inquire 
too pressingly, nor suspect without founda- 
tion, as a groundless suspicion greatly harms 
children of noble qualities and estranges them 
from the educator. 

(6) The vice betrays itself at times by suffi- 
[133] 



jtoraBstg t& qtntilQ 



ciently clear outward signs. Kotelmann's 
" Schulgesundheitspflege " (School Hygiene) 
gives the following mental consequences of 
masturbation: Softness, lack of energy, bash- 
fulness, want of taste for study, weak memory, 
absent-mindedness, impaired thinking-power, 
ill-humor, and depression of spirit which may 
even terminate in hypochondria; the physical 
consequences: dizziness, headache, ringing in 
the ears, palpitation of the heart, subjective 
light-flashes, and, above all, functional sexual 
derangements which manifest themselves by 
frequent nightly and even day-time pollutions. 
True, the outward signs are not always cer- 
tain proofs; as such symptoms may either 
arise from other causes, or, in some cases, be 
absent where vice really holds sway. 

(c) Therefore still other means must be 
used; strive, in the first place, to quicken the 
conscience and make it more tender, and to 
win the children's entire confidence so that 
they own their sin. As this avowal is quite 
hard, educators shall prompt them to it (by 
expressing sympathy, partly exculpating the 
children, excusing them through ignorance, 
etc., holding out help). 

[134] 



Direct inquiries about the existence of this 
vice may be made as follows: "Did you touch, 
handle your sexual parts?' ' If they say: 
"Yes," "Alone or with others? for a long 
while or just for a moment? " In the latter 
case inquire no further; as it may result from 
peevishness or thoughtlessness. If "for a 
long while," "Why did you do that?" (Gen- 
erally no answer will be given to this ques- 
tion.) Help the children by asking: "Do 
you have pain there, biting or itching?" (If 
they say "Yes," remind them that in such 
case it is no sin.) "Do you feel pleasure 
through that? How often, weekly, daily?" 

To propose efficacious remedies, it is neces- 
sary to find out exactly the ordinary occasion 
of the sin. 

To whom should this avowal be made? 
Children who don't yet go to confession should 
tell their mothers; then all the other educators 
(pastors, catechists) must help, provided that 
they all know how to proceed carefully. With 
children who go to confession, the confessor 
must, of course, obtain full information about 
the necessary curative process. If they are 
but partly within his reach (if for instance, 

[135] 



J£bntttUn$ l& TfpnxitQ 



they seldom make a confession, or if the 
confessor cannot become fully acquainted 
with the child's surroundings), then an- 
other educator must undertake the cure. 
Physical troubles often lead to sinful habits 
(ascaris (worms), skin-eruptions, organic de- 
fects). In these cases and especially when 
there is evidence of an abnormal early sexual 
inclination, the doctor will have to be con- 
sulted, and he also will have to avoid all 
coldness and severity, but prove a friendly 
adviser to the child. 

2. Only in case of certain knowledge of the 
evil can the proper remedies be successfully 
employed. They must all aim at lessening 
as much as possible the occasions of sin, and 
so strengthening the child's will as to turn it 
altogether from the sin. To this effect: 

(a) The Eucharistic remedy, frequent Holy 
Communion is necessary. 

(6) A horror of sin is to be instilled through 
consideration of the motives on pages 22, 51, 
etc. These are quite familiar to priests, as 
they often quote them in the pulpit. 

(c) Exposing the evil consequences, ruinous 
to body and soul, both for this life and the 

[136] 



next, will awaken dread of sin. But let in- 
structors take pains to bar discouragement. 
This exposition of the motives shall vary 
according to age and sex, character, and the 
occasion of the sin. (Girls are more affected 
by loss of beauty, paleness, withering, bad 
smell; with timid ones the description should 
not be too glaring.) Beware of exaggerations. 
Christian educators will naturally dwell most 
on the supernatural motives. 

(d) Courage and confidence must by all 
means be inspired. Therefore, while alleging 
the bitter fruits of sin for this life and the 
next, insist upon the mercy of God, on the 
power of grace, on stirring examples as well 
as on the beauty and blessings of chastity. 
Sincere spiritual physicians will naturally 
promise to aid the sin-sick by their prayers, 
and they will eagerly fulfil this promise. The 
lives of zealous educators abound with exam- 
ples of the efficacy of sympathetic interest in 
such youthful sinners. 

Priests more than others are called upon to 
advise and help. Let them never content 
themselves (whether at catechism or in the 
confessional) with a few commonplace exhor- 

[137] 



tnrottsut l& T&ntik 



tations. The attempt to rid the young of the 
vice of impurity would prove vain without 
correcting the previous education; nor can 
this work be effected by a few general re- 
marks, but thorough investigation of the 
defects, and ceaseless efforts to remove them 
are requisite. From this view-point, cate- 
chists will strive to imbue their pupils with 
the spirit of prayer and with a sincere devotion 
to the Blessed Virgin, and with love for self- 
denial, and for steady suitable work (compare 
page 44, and our "Katechetik und Metho- 
dik," page 24. Grundsatze chiefly Nos. 179, 
183-186) and voluntary renunciation of even 
lawful pleasures along with frequent confes- 
sion and Communion. The purpose of amend- 
ment must refer to shunning and preventing 
the particular occasions and causes of sin. A 
relapse should be followed by immediate con- 
fession, as the fear of having to confess that 
sin forthwith often proves an effective safe- 
guard. At times also a vow might be made 
for a short period (a week or until the next 
confession). 

3. A relapse is still possible despite the use 
of all these remedies. Experienced educators 

[138] 






are never surprised at relapses. By long sin- 
ful habit the whole organism has grown most 
excitable so that harmless things and happen- 
ings may become fresh dangers to the en- 
feebled will. This must be taken into account 
from the very first accusation and purpose of 
amendment, not in such a way, however, as 
to weaken the resolve to amend: "I hope you 
will sin no more. But if through frailty you 
should fall again, don't get discouraged, but 
make an act of contrition before your cruci- 
fied Savior, and promise to better your 
life." It is the educators' duty to keep up 
the good will of the relapsing and to steel 
it by persevering solicitude. Impatience 
and anger are out of place. The best 
means also for the relapsing is to rise again 
by perfect sorrow and frequent confession 
and Communion kept up until the bad habit 
is overcome. 

An extraordinary means for the riper youth 
is (as we mentioned on page 43) familiar 
acquaintance with a good, pure-minded Chris- 
tian girl. This means has rescued not a few 
from the slough of sin. Such a remedy, 
however, may have its disadvantages too, 

[139] 



^bntating t& fntiiQ 



They are less to be feared if the lovers are at 
a safe distance from each other. 

Complete change of surroundings and of 
the ways of living, if possible, is another 
extraordinary remedy, unfortunately for the 
most too expensive. Charitable institutions 
for such might prove a blessing. 

Conclusion 

Modern pedagogues claim infallible success 
for their theories. The Christian educator 
is by no means an enthusiast. "The best 
family/ ' says Sailer, the late Bishop of Re- 
gensburg, at the end of his "Treatise on 
Education," "gives only the plant, the best 
education nurtures it. But there is only One 
who makes it thrive. The most eminent 
pedagogue must say with St. Paul: ' Running 
and racing avail not — mercy and the bless- 
ing of eternal love bring success/ Educator, 
there is a higher One than thou, and than 
all teachers and pupils. He alone is the 
essential Educator." 

Just as Christian parents are conscious that 
God alone dispenses the blessing of children, 

[140] 



and that they but cooperate with God's 
omnipotence, so Christian educators deem 
themselves but co-laborers of the all-wise 
Educator of men, and therefore they cling 
closely to Him and to His truth, and that is 
the right spirit of the sexual training too, 
the right spirit we have emphasized as the 
most important educational factor. 

Note: In a supplement to " Educating to Purity" 
(Wie kann die Anstaltserziehung zur Sittenreinheit heranbilden? 
Eine Erganzung der Schrift "Erziehung zur Keuschheit"). 
Dr. Krus insists again on telling children the truth about the 
origin of babes. 

He stigmatizes as a downright slander the charge that 
educational institutions are hotbeds of impurity. 

On the contrary they offer exceptional advantages over 
the home, as they do away with: 

1. Many dangers through the pupils' isolation such as bad 
company, obscene representations, etc. 

2. Idleness through a strict order of the day. 

3. Many excitants of the sexual passion, such as luxuries 
and various indulgences. 

4. Undue familiarity by inculcating constant gentlemanly 
behavior, hence the " Touch me not" rule is strictly 
observed by all except the small children. 

School sexual instruction should be given only to make up 
for parental neglect. 

Sensual friendship must be eschewed. 

The pupils of institutions generally receive and ought to 
receive regular instructions and exhortations on purity, training 
them to be ever watchful. 

[141] 




COMPILED BY REV. C. VAN DER DONCKT 

1. Introduction 

The world moves and society is out of 
joint. Every age has its troubles and perils. 
An actual incubus on the Christian world, as 
anciently on the pagan, is the divorce plague 
with its train of attendant evils. Another 
one is the shameless license of the press and 
of the stage, which is but too true a reflex of 
social degeneration. In the wake of these 
ills follows, as a natural consequence, the 
deplorable fact that children, whose eyes 
and ears are wide open all day long (and 
who are mostly suffered to do whatever — and 
to go wherever — they please) are unusually 
precocious in those matters where ignorance 
is bliss. 

Hence the imperative need of timely fore- 
warning and instructing. And, as a Protes- 

[142] 



T&nitvbuttiffn 



tant lawyer of much experience and eminent 
literary culture said to me, when discussing 
this question: " Physicians have informed me 
that not a few girls of fifteen years are ruined 
for life for having missed parental vigilance 
and teaching. Is it right then that, while 
the market is full of books and magazines 
on the purity campaign, the Catholic Church 
should keep aloof from this struggle?" 

While the Church is ever zealously active in 
combating vice and promoting virtue, and 
while statistics show that the most faithful 
Catholics are everywhere the purest people 
on earth — witness the Irish and the Spanish 
— yet there is a dearth of explicit and suffi- 
ciently detailed Catholic books on this sub- 
ject in vernacular languages. Therefore the 
learned and wide-awake Cardinal Mercier, 
realizing the necessity of spreading social- 
purity literature, earnestly recommended to 
his people, and particularly to his priests 
and seminarians, the Self and Sex series 
written mainly by Protestant ministers. 

To supply such a comprehensive Catholic 
handbook, I deemed it useful to enlarge on 
the questions dealt with by the authors of 

[143] 



^Ehntaiin^ I® IjfnrilQ 



Educating to Purity, and in doing so, as 
attentive readers will observe, I am merely 
filling out and broadening the plan of instruc- 
tion they clearly mapped out in their little 
work. 

Our manual has this advantage over those 
of non-Catholic writers, that, in its onslaught 
against immorality, it marshals together the 
natural forces and the supernatural agencies — 
particularly Confession and Holy Communion 
— which Christ left to His Church to build 
up men into His likeness. 

I have carefully gathered the following 
notes, partly from my well-nigh twenty-five 
years' experience in the sacred ministry, and 
largely from various approved sources, such 
as Alban Stolz' Erziehungskunst, Very Rev. 
Father J. Fonssagrives' UEducazione delta 
Purezza (from the Fifteenth French Edition), 
F. W. Foerster's Lebensfiihrung, Dr. Th. G. 
Kornig's UIgiene delta Castita (Hygiene of 
Chastity), translated from the Fifth German 
Edition for the Italian Central Committee of 
Public Morality, Die Ehe (Besonders fur 
Braut- und Eheleute, Twelfth Edition with 
Episcopal Imprimatur), Dr. N. F. Cooke's 

[144] 



^nlxffhuttian 



Satan in Society, , and Fernand Nicolay's 
Les Enfants Mai Eleves (awarded a premium 
by the Academy of Moral and Political 
Sciences), Twentieth French Edition. The 
Third Spanish Edition thereof, Los Ninos 
Mai Educados, is prefixed by forty-six, mostly 
Catholic, press recommendations. It is from 
this remarkable work of the Parisian lawyer 
Nicolay that I drew a portion of the last but 
one number of this appendix, which he thus 
prefaces: "All ages and all nations judged it 
a reckless undertaking to do what is being 
done nowadays, to implant religious indiffer- 
ence in society.' ' The paramount importance 
of the educational value of religion is a 
sufficient apology for the copiousness and 
the length of our quotations. 

Two physicians of wide experience in the 
East and the West — both keenly alive to 
the ills and wants of our actual society — 
favored me with their encouragement while 
I was engaged on this modest work, and 
warmly expressed a desire to see it in the 
hands of parents and of older boys and girls. 



[145] 




2. No More Stork Story 

Popular writers and leading educators have 
been discussing during these last years the 
momentous question of sexual instruction of 
the young. One thing they are all agreed on 
is the necessity of relegating to the museum 
of antiquities the silly story of the stork, which 
is as unethical as it is unedifying. 

Self-respect is certainly a necessary and 
most helpful virtue. What can be more cal- 
culated to imbue children with a lofty senti- 
ment of their dignity than the simple truth? 

Some pagans of old and some of our day, 
the Japanese for instance, enhanced the 
reverential awe due to their heroes by pro- 
claiming them sons of Heaven. Are we not 
all such in very deed? Is it not a universally 
admitted axiom of Christian philosophy that 
the nobler part of man, the soul, the mind 
which makes him lord of all the brute creation, 
is directly infused by God at the moment of 

[146] 



p\0 MttTt M>t0Tk 0tt*TQ 

conception? And as to the body, we must 
apply to it the inspired words of the mother 
of the Machabees, "I know not how you were 
formed in my womb; for I neither gave you 
breath nor soul nor life, neither did I frame the 
limbs of every one of you, but the Creator 
of the World." II Mach. VII, 22. (See 
Father Boudreaux' beautiful book, God our 
Father.) 

Whoever builds a house on his own ground 
and of his own material is certainly the owner 
of that structure. Are we not then for a 
great many more reasons from God and of 
God? 

What justification is there for telling chil- 
dren a falsehood? By all means let a mother 
save her children the terrible shock to the 
reverential trust their God-given nature bids 
them repose in her veracity. To make 
them believe the stork story — is it not 
teaching them to tell fibs? Does the 
awful "Beware lest ye scandalize one of 
those little ones" not apply to this case? 
On the other hand, earnestly telling even an 
eight-year-old child that babies come from 
God, that he causes their little bodies to 

[147] 



I&hntating to T^mtUq 



grow in the mother's womb, as He makes the 
fruit grow on the tree, shall bring about that 
the child's heart-strings will entwine them- 
selves more tenderly and more tenaciously 
around the mother. It is from the mother's 
lips that the little ones eagerly learn the 
mystery of the Incarnation. Is there no 
danger that, upon finding out that their 
parent deceived them with regard to the 
former, they will suspect that she may be 
equally guilty with regard to the latter 
story? To my mind, Father Gerrard marred 
his beautiful book on Marriage and Parent- 
hood by advocating the perpetuation of that 
deception on children, to whom, as even a 
pagan author declared, the greatest reverence 
is due. 

Furthermore, if they have been sneered at 
because of their greenness by their older 
school-mates, a sense of triumph over their 
parents' meanness will impel them to pry into 
the mystery of conception, etc., with hood- 
lums, whom they believe more sincere 
towards them than their God-given teachers; 
and when found out, they will, as Alban Stolz 
observes, communicate it to others, and alas! 

[148] 



Piff $L&xt $tark j^iurg 

they may be tempted to proceed beyond 
mere words. And thus what should have 
been a source of deeper confidence becomes 
a means of estrangement. 

I confess that I was amazed as well as 
bitterly disappointed at the antiquated atti- 
tude of a priest and a doctor, both eminent 
in their respective professions, who objected 
to my discarding as I do in the foregoing par- 
agraphs what one of them styled a " Pious 
Fable.' ' Must we not rather call it an 
impious trickery? 

A fable, according to Webster, is "A brief 
story or tale embodying a moral.' ' What 
moral is there in the stork story? It is a 
fable only in the further sense given by 
Webster: "A foolish story, a fabrication." 
Judged by the plain principles of Catholic 
theology, it is a downright lie. And, as 
Alban Stolz says with regard to this very 
question: "A lie never brings a blessing." 
Our masters in the sacred science define it: 
Expressio assertiva illius quod interne judicatur 
falsum, or prolatio verborum cum conscientia 
oppositi: the wilful or deliberate assertion of 
what one thinks to be false. The root and 

[149] 



^EhutaHn^ t& ^nxilQ 



the essence of a lie is: discordia sermonis 
et intellectus: the difformity between the 
mind and the speech. From this results the 
deception of the hearer which is implicitly 
intended by the speaker. St. Thomas and 
nearly all theologians constitute the lie com- 
pletive et perfective in the intention of deceiv- 
ing, though such an explicit intention is not 
essential: the wilful deliberate assertion of 
what is false is a lie. Thus St. Bonaventure: 
Ad omne mendacium ista duo concurrunt: 
dicere falsum et intentio (quamvis indirecta) 
fallendi. (In lib. Ill, dis. XXXVIII, 9.11, 
concl. St. Augustine: Enchiridion, Ch. 
XVIII and XXII.) The former adds and 
reiterates that this intention of deceiving is 
always included in the false statement. 

That intention of deceiving essential to a 
lie is nothing more than the intention or the 
will of telling what is false. 

The primary and radical disorder is the 
abuse of speech. Words exist to express our 
thought. Whoso uses them to speak against 
his thought abuses speech and perverts the 
order of nature, which is instituted for the 
good of society. The welfare of the common- 

[150] 



a 0,0X2 j^farlt ^tur^ 



wealth demands that a lie be always for- 
bidden, because this moral difformity tends 
necessarily and of itself to deceive the 
neighbor, and therefore to harm him and 
consequently society at large. It is never 
lawful to use an intrinsically evil means to 
compass a good end. 

Also the numerous writers of various creeds, 
now engaged in promoting a sane sexual 
training, deem that story a lie. Says Alban 
Stolz in his Erziehungskunst: "When children 
inquire about the origin of babes, don't tell 
them a falsehood, but rather dismiss them 
with the words: 'Children must not know 
such things.' " To my mind this answer will 
serve only to stimulate the children's curi- 
osity and drive them to draw the secret from 
polluted sources. 

The same noted author strongly deprecates 
telling children fables or fairy-tales, because, 
if they believe them, they are being lied to, 
and if they are told that those stories are 
mere inventions, they will not profit by them, 
as only true living examples knock at the 
heart and impress the mind. Secondly, these 
fables will prompt them to invent similar 

[151] 



JZhncaiittg i& TfrntitQ 



stories and narrate them as true. And 
thirdly, it is a greater sin to lie to children 
than to adults, as the former are more harmed 
by bad examples than the latter. Besides, 
children are more sacred, being still unspoiled 
by sin. 

Now I quote from Die Ehe, Besonders fur 
Braut- und Eheleute: 

" Whence do babies come?" Dietrich's 
parents had talked the matter over, and 
came to the conclusion that the best thing 
to do was to tell the truth, and enlighten 
their boy as prudently as possible. So the 
mother answered: "See, my darling, as the 
fruit grows on the tree, so do little children 
grow in the mother's body." The latter 
nodded approvingly; he understood and 
found it natural. "But mamma," pursued 
he, "how then do they come out?" "When 
the child is big enough to leave the mother's 
body, the mother's body opens of itself and 
the baby comes out." "That must hurt, 
mamma, does it not?" "Sure, my darling." 
"Are you still mad at me?" "Mad?" re- 
plied the mother, as she warmly clasped the 
boy to her heart. "No, my dear that was 

[152] 



Plff fii&rt ^i&xk <£>hr*g 

not your fault. All mothers suffer when 
their children are born, but they forget all 
their pains the moment they see their little 
ones. Now, darling, don't look so sad. Smile 
and laugh again like mamma. " 

Dietrich, however, could not laugh for a 
while. The thought that he had caused 
mamma pain made him serious and pensive. 
And later, when mamma kissed him good- 
night, the little chap flung his arms round 
mamma's neck, saying, "Oh, mamma, I love 
you so much more now than before." 

Dietrich had not been thrust back disap- 
pointed. He did not seek information from 
older boys, as his mother had told him all 
he was entitled to know. He had no secret 
for her and she had none for him. He 
became not only a good son, but mamma's 
friend. Nothing could shake the reverential 
love and the unlimited confidence of his 
childhood. 

Here follows an extract from the foreword 
of Am Lebensquell, A Contribution to Sexual 
Education: Fifty-eight premium essays se- 
lected from five hundred papers sent in to the 
Diirer Bund: 

[153] 



^hntalitt0 It* l^ntitQ 



Little Harry looks out into the large world 
and inquires, "Mother, whence comes the 
sun?" "He slept there behind the moun- 
tain." "And whence comes the snow . . . 
and whence did I come?" "The stork 
brought you." "The stork?" "Yes, the 
stork." "That cannot be." "It is so." 

It is no longer a fable, it is a lie, which 
stands between the parent and the child. 
And this lie works. Something which may 
not be talked about looms up as a wall of 
separation between beings with whom there 
should be no secrets. This one falsehood 
and deception of the parents towards the 
child draws others, hundreds of others, in 
its wake, and causes the child to be insincere 
and to hide things from father and mother. 

Then the child's simplicity is shocked by 
certain happenings and next by wicked com- 
panions or servants. 

"Your parents lie to you. They know 
why. Sordidum est sed nihilominus hoc fa- 
ciunt quia delectationem procurat." 

Fortunate the child who can preserve his 
purity! Blessed is that child who continues 
loving his parents, although they keep silence 

[154] 



r 



\ff (Mvrt <$>farJt jtiurg 



where they ought to speak. They did not 
know what they did, as they did not know 
what they should have done. 

And the lie spreads beyond the family 
circle. We share the conviction with many 
others that concealing, twisting, and lying 
in this matter is one of the causes of the 
falseness of our whole civilization. That 
very subterfuge which was invented with a 
view of preserving purity practically leads 
to defilement. Not only the mind, but the 
body too, seeks to revenge itself over that 
old deception. 

We feel at ease as long as we see the clouds 
only that veil the reality. Peering through 
the veil, however, forces the conviction upon 
us that it is high time for action. The family, 
the people, society clamor for a change. 

Havelock Ellis says in the Good House- 
keeping magazine, October, 1911: " During 
the past ten years more has been done to 
influence popular feeling on this question 
than during the whole of the preceding 
century. The German Durer Bund offered 
prizes for the best essays on this subject. 
Parents and teachers have considered it a 

[155] 



|£&*tmiitt0 in fsrrstg 



duty to say nothing and have felt justi- 
fied in telling lies or fairy tales in order to 
maintain their attitude." 

In the September number of this same 
monthly the Rev. Lyman P. Powell sug- 
gests the following answer to inquiring little 
ones: " Mother and father love each other 
very much. Where God is, there is love, and 
God wants little ones to be. Children are 
the special proof that God is love. When 
God wants to send a little child into a home, 
he fits up, just beneath the mother's heart, 
a snug nest, not unlike the nests the birds 
live in. Then, out of two tiny eggs the 
father and mother bring together in the nest, 
a little child is hatched just like a little bird. 
But for months and months he lives in his 
nest in the mother's body. The mother 
knows the little one is there and loves him 
dearly. A part of all the food she eats goes 
to his nourishment. At last when the little 
one is too big to stay longer in the nest, the 
doctor comes and helps to bring him out 
into the world. No fairy tale is half so 
beautiful, and, best of all, the story is true" 

The earnest and solemn way in which the 
[156] 



Pi* fil*Tt ***** ^**r£ 

disclosure has been made (the mother and 
child realize its sacredness, as when God 
said to Moses: "Put off the shoes from thy 
feet, for the place whereon thou standest 
is holy ground [Ex. III. 5] fully prepares 
the child for the warning never to speak 
about that matter to anyone but to papa 
and mamma alone. 

Sexual emotions will not arise in properly 
reared children before physical conditions 
call them forth; so very young children may 
be thus instructed. As a result, they are 
happy over this new discovery and over this 
fresh knowledge acquired. The mother's 
sincerity is rewarded by a great increase of 
the child's love, esteem, and tenderness for 
her, and, above all, by his open-hearted 
trustfulness, so conducive to that salutary 
educational agency, the loving, candid, per- 
petually intimate companionship between 
parents and their offspring. 



s 



[157] 




3. Children's Curiosity regarding Sexual 

Matters. Promiscuous Bathing of 

the Little Ones a Damper 

Alban Stolz' Erziehungskunst descants in 
five different places on the children's exces- 
sive curiosity regarding things sexual which 
is sharpened by their elders' studied secre- 
tiveness. 

The authors of Educating to Purity state 
that something may be said to children anent 
the differences of sex in connection with the 
history of man's creation. To spare young 
folk the numerous temptations that may 
result from the prurient investigation of this 
fact later at the frequent stirrings of passion, 
to my mind it would be morally profitable 
to permit boys and girls under five years of 
age to bathe together in the mothers' 
presence. 

With regard to the little ones we agree with 
Henry Hamill, but we decidedly object to 

[158] 



^kiibtttt f & (§ttti&&ilQ 



the promiscuous sun- and wet bathing of 
adults which he seems to advocate. Though 
competent judges, as well as I, cannot recom- 
mend his book, The Truth we Owe to Youth, 
because it is too devoid of the religious 
atmosphere, and it appears suggestive in 
certain places, yet I beg to quote from it the 
following: " Bodily and general cleanliness 
helps to lay the foundation of the fastidious 
personal sense, a safeguard against im- 
purity, which is kept in wholesome limits by 
custom to the naked sight of age-fellows of 
both sexes in the bath and by avoidance of 
all that mystification which is the seed of 
subsequent hankering and pruriency.' ' 

Thus little boys and girls can learn their 
differences of anatomy before such mutual 
inspection in any way proves a temptation. 
Furthermore, methinks this would help to 
attain what the authors of Educating to 
Purity set forth as a desirable end, i.e., to 
dispel the idea that there is something 
mysterious behind everything sexual. 

I anticipate opposition to this candid view 
of mine, which I tentatively propose, but, as 
with regard to the origin of babes, I aim at 

[159] 



^Ebntating t& Tf/inxitQ 



thus innocently forefending the evil of subse- 
quent prurient investigation, which in many 
cases is bound to occur in this unedenic 
world. Nor would modesty suffer thence, 
as the mother would carefully make the 
little ones understand that outside of that 
one occasion of her bathing and cleaning 
them together to save time, even little folk 
should never uncover themselves in each 
other's presence. 




[160] 




4. Strengthening of the Will to attain 
Higher Life 

Character is completely formed will. 

— Bishop Spalding. 

The reasoning power and the will are exer- 
cised and strengthened by self-denial. 

Children of six to seven years can be taught 
as follows: You are made up of soul and 
body. Your soul especially is the image of 
God. The body often wants something dif- 
ferent from what the soul craves, e.g., you 
pass through a park full of flowers, or along- 
side a garden with ripe fruit, cherries, peaches, 
etc.; you long for those roses, etc., and your 
mouth waters for the tidbits; no one is look- 
ing, you can take them, but your reason, that 
is your soul, says : No, that would be stealing. 

You broke a pane of glass in the house, 
quite by accident. Your father asks: "Who 
broke the light ?" You know he will scold 

[161] 



^bntating iff ^nrii^ 



and whip you. So your body says: Tell him 
you don't know. But your reason protests, 
saying: Tis better to be whipped than to tell 
a lie. — So you obey your reason and own up. 
God has endowed us with free will; we can 
follow the body or the soul. If we suit the 
body, we commit a sin; if we keep on sinning, 
we become wicked and after this life God will 
cast us from Him forever. If we do what is 
good for the soul, we please God, and by per- 
severing that way, we win Heaven. That 
we may always heed our soul, we must be 
complete masters of our body, as a rider is of 
his horse. We cannot become masters of our 
body with regard to serious and sinful matters^ 
unless we are such also in things indifferent y 
in which it would be no sin to yield to the body ; 
for instance, in winter time we come into a 
house with a hot stove; our body prompts us 
to go to warm ourselves. If our reason com- 
mands, it will say to the body: There is no 
hurry; we shall be warm shortly. — Or, on 
tasting some very fine dessert at table, we can 
at once quit eating and say we have plenty. 
Or we hear a tumult on the street. We feel 
like rushing to the window, but we think it is 

[162] 



better to mortify our eyes, and we refrain from 
looking out at all. Or if we have tooth-ache 
or stomach-ache, we resolve to bear the pain 
silently in order not to disturb others by our 
lamenting. 

Such self-denials will be taken up by the 
children all the more willingly when based on 
religious motives. Let them select a morti- 
fication on Friday in honor of and gratitude 
for the sufferings of our Lord. 

We shall never bring children to practise 
dutiful self-mastery, unless we lead them to 
make sacrifices of their will in matters morally 
indifferent. Just such little sacrifices e.g., a 
slight self-denial in eating, refraining for 
a while from drinking in spite of thirst, 
from saying something lawful, or communi- 
cating some interesting news, to repress 
curiosity, to suppress a permissible joke, 
and the like, will strengthen the children's 
will. 

To acquire self-control it is important to 
resist outbursts of strong emotions, or at least 
to moderate them, for instance, the impulse 
of laughing or weeping. Uncontrolled out- 
bursts of joy or sorrow show a lack of in- 

[163] 



J&&ncaUn$ h* ^ttrit^ 



terior domestic economy. Nothing avails 
more to self-mastery and manliness than 
energetic combating of the inclination to 
loquacity. Therefore daily striving against 
the temptation to indulge in idle talk, and the 
practice of keeping silence, whenever im- 
pelled to speak for the mere sake of pouring 
forth empty words, steel the moral temper 
of the soul in every respect. Self-mastery, 
that princely distinction of man whereby 
reason rules the animal in him, will be still 
further promoted by putting off things for 
which there is no hurry, by not defending 
one's self when falsely accused or unde- 
servedly blamed, and by keeping a strict 
guard over the eyes and ears. Again the 
desire of passing for a wit or humorist is a 
grand opportunity to exercise self-discipline, 
as it implies temptations to say things which 
our conscience condemns. 

The Greeks believed that only such men 
could be independent thinkers who had sub- 
dued their passions. This self-restraint and 
self-denial are nowise akin to gloom. They 
only can be truly cheerful who have learned 
to say at times a decided "No," and who can 

[164] 



completely curb their cravings; they rule in 
their inner home, they are masters not only 
over the senses, but they exercise soul-dis- 
cipline and bravery against their own nature. 
As the olden belief holds that by a sacrifice 
God is appeased, and disposed to grant our 
petitions, so, whenever we wrest a sacrifice 
from ourselves, our higher faculties acquire 
true freedom and strength in all their actions. 
From the foregoing principles it is self-evi- 
dent how frightfully those parents blunder 
who constantly accede to every wish and yield 
to every whim of their children. How can 
the latter be expected to thwart the prompt- 
ings of the flesh, if they have never been 
crossed in their cravings by the former? 
As iron is tempered by hammering, so the 
children's character is strengthened by occa- 
sional but firm repression and resistance. 
The enforcement of such discipline will 
strongly help them to acquire the habit of 
self-restraint. 

A right method of strengthening one's will 
is to ask one's self whether one has not really 
a special bent and aptitude for some intellec- 
tual or material occupation, such as music, 

[165] 



^Efontating I0 fttrifg 



writing, manual labor, drawing, gardening, 
or the service of the neighbor. This being 
ascertained, exert one's self to master that 
specialty by performing that work in so careful 
and faithful a manner that perseverance 
and exactitude may become a habit, aye, a 
passion. 

Prof. Wm. James of Columbia, in a speech 
on Human Energy, which appeared in a French 
magazine in 1907, praises ascetics, because 
through discipline they raise themselves to 
the highest degree of energy, of freedom, and 
force of will. 1 

5. Joy of Self-conquest and persevering 
Labor 

We shall soon experience the joy of perfect 
workmanship, and this realization of our latent 
capacity will heighten the energy of our ac- 
complishments in every other domain, and 
thus we shall discover in ourselves a growing 
aversion to doing anything by halves. 

On one side youths see the refreshing 
gratification of their wishes, desires, and in- 

1 Compare H. Lavrande's Le Traitement de la Volonte et la 
Psychothirapie. Bloud & Co., Paris. 

[166] 



3fi*£ <*£ £tl£~twtupttmt 



clinations; while on the other side stands 
the gray, joyless, and stern imperative of 
duty, threatening like a foreign power which 
seeks day by day to yoke them into slavery. 
How sadly they err who are blinded by the 
illusion that only indolent gratification is 
true life, and that to exert one's self and 
severely to economize our time is sacrificing 
personal liberty. On the contrary, all the 
while a firm will keeps us strenuously and per- 
severingly occupied in worthy pursuits, we are 
quaffing nectar to which common mortals 
cannot approach their lips. Then only do 
we enjoy individual life when our mind vic- 
toriously repels the power of outward things, 
and our character triumphs over circum- 
stances and accidents and over the resistance 
of our life and our nerves. " Without sacri- 
fice noble life is impossible — the sacrifice of 
vulgar desires and easy ways, that what is 
difficult and higher may be attained. The 
animal, the ignorant, and the indolent are 
content, while they who live in the mind and 
in the conscience are self-urged to rise above 
themselves." x 

1 Bishop J. L. Spalding, Glimpses of Truth, pp. 129, 131. 
[167] 



fihntaltttg in IjfnTitQ 



6. Character Building based on Self-restraint 

The manner in which man treats his neigh- 
bor exercises a decisive formative influence 
upon his own character. Contrary to the 
sensualist's theory that " whatever pleases 
is allowed/ ' we say: "Only that is lawful 
which makes man really strong." Yielding 
weakens; self-restraint produces heightened 
energy. 

Christ is indeed the peerless Pedagogue, 
the great Educator. The experience and 
progress of nineteen hundred years culminate 
in the preaching and emphasizing of His 
primary principles by the leading — even 
un-Christian and socialistic — writers of the 
world. With Him the most famous edu- 
cators cry out: "Deny thyself." "The 
Kingdom of the Soul suffereth violence." 
"In your patience shall you possess your 
souls." 

How many opportunities to strengthen the 
will and refine the heart are afforded by the 
initial relations of the sexes. But how seldom 
do the young avail themselves of these oppor- 
tunities to steel their characters against 

[168] 



tijfyavatttr PttiiM»0 



vanity and the impulse of the moment. 
Whoso is master of the moment is master of 
his whole life. By that one moment man's 
fate is sealed. How many higher powers of 
soul remain uncultivated when the young 
enter upon these relations without a firm pur- 
pose to utilize them for growth of character, 
and for the upbuilding of the other party, 
instead of living merely for the hour and 
frittering away precious years in namby- 
pamby converse, careless idling, and sacrific- 
ing those high sentiments which tend to 
upbuild, preserve, concentrate, and strengthen 
the inner man. 

It is a fact that a certain unrestrained asso- 
ciation of the young of both sexes is more 
wholesome than artificial separation. The 
former naturally ensues from the growing 
custom of sharing in the same sports and 
labors. A beneficial effect will, however, re- 
sult only if this association be kept within 
certain fast limits, and this not merely from 
the philistine's standpoint, but in behalf of 
deep genuine love, which can exist only in 
recollected souls. People can rise to real love 
only through character and soul-culture : that 

[169] 



T&bnealing I0 ^mity* 



concentration of the life of sentiment, 
that considerate chivalry, that will-power, 
that refinement of feeling, such as are never 
found with those who have not thoroughly 
gone through the school of self-restraint, and 
who fancy that one learns to love by gratify- 
ing one's inclination and eagerly taking every 
opportunity of spending some sweet hours. 

The school of true love is not to be found 
in unrestrainedly enjoying beforehand what 
only the full life's bond can grant, not 
in idly dallying with the charms of sex, not 
in the so-called friendships abounding in 
surreptitious intimacies and sentimentalities; 
no, the true school of love consists in training 
one's self to curb and thoroughly subdue one's 
animal instincts and one's dependence on the 
other sex. Only that man acquires true man- 
liness, will-power, determination, and relia- 
bility who earnestly undertakes to stand this 
test; and only that girl becomes a full-fledged 
woman, self-poised, quite unselfish and yet 
thoroughly individualistic, who does not jeop- 
ardize nor waste herself in little love-affairs, 
but who guards fidelity for the great and final 
confidence. 

[170] 



7. Advantages of Chastity 

Horace speaks of the Roman students who 
lived chastely to increase their mental vigor. 
Tennyson cries out: 

My strength is as the strength of ten 
Because my heart is pure. — Sir Galahad. 

And even the immoral Emile Zola says: 
The pure man is the strongest. 

Honore Balzac, the old master of modern 
realism, urges upon young writers chastity, 
moderation, and industry, to attain success. 
Alex. Dumas, Jr., says, in The Clemenceau 
Case: " Carefully observe the private life of 
those who justly claim the title of artists, and 
you will find that they are men of positive 
faith, and some of them of a purity of morals 
like that of Saints. True genius is chaste, 
and its work, no matter of what form, bears 
the character of sanctity. " 

At the time of Germany's War for Inde- 
pendence, a League of Virtue was organized, 
whose members bound themselves to increase 
their youthful strength by practicing chastity 
and purity of morals. 

[171] 



'^Gikntating l& fntiiQ 



Chastity has always been recognized as an 
apt means to secure greater physical and 
mental capacity. During six centuries, no 
man was admitted to a professorship in 
the University of Paris unless he led a 
celibate life. 

The Italian author, Mantegazza, says: "All 
men, and more than others all youths, experi- 
ence the immediate benefits of chastity. 
Memory is prompt and tenacious; thought is 
quick and abundant; the will strong, and 
the character tempered with a vigor un- 
known to libertines. No prism reflects upon 
surrounding objects such heavenly colors as 
does the prism of chastity, which throws its 
variegated hues on all things in this world, 
wafting us into boundless clear vistas of joy 
and unclouded happiness. 

"The younger we are the more useful is 
chastity to health of body and mind. To 
refrain from carnal pleasures before being in 
the twenties, is to lay by a store of energy for 
the whole life. 

" Many wants grow according to the meas- 
ure in which they are satisfied. Where there 
is a will there is a way. Man is free to begin, 

[172] 



but not to end. Should you lack strength to 
stand alone, lean upon a trusty friend, who will 
encourage you in your resolves and cheer you 
when you grow despondent. I assure you, 
that for every lewdness foregone you will 
find a treasure of Golconda, and with every 
onward step victory shall become easier. 

"I saw many reduced to extreme weakness, 
to stupidity, and paralysis, from excess of 
love; I can count scores of diseases which are 
the fruit of lechery; and I never witnessed a 
single illness caused by chastity alone/ ' x 

" Chastity is the education of the senses 
and of the affections. It is the holy culture 
of the noblest joys of the mind. It is the 
most precious gem that can adorn the texture 
of life. Blessed are they who can make of 
love an energy which educates and uplifts, 
and who make it the greatest factor of noble 
ambitions and magnanimous projects. 

"In many cases thorough chastity, imposed 
by an iron will, is an admirable thing, worthy 
of being placed in a museum of the most rare 
and precious objects." 2 

1 Igiene delV Amore, CIII, p. 56: C. X. pp. 156, 158. 

2 Fisiologia delV Amore, Chapter XIV, pp. 200, 231. 

[173] 



T&bntaling l# purity 



Ancient athletes and modern ones, such as 
the English boxers of our days, are, while 
training, not only bound to a special diet, 
but also to complete sexual abstinence. 
Warriors prepare themselves for battle 
by living continently. Many sporting associa- 
tions, likewise, require chastity of their 
members. 

In answer to those who claim that sexual 
indulgence is following nature, and against 
the advocacy of early marriage, Dr. Kornig 
says: " Domestic and wild animals which are 
kept in captivity and are not allowed to 
copulate are none the less healthy, in fact, 
specialists say that this often turns to their 
advantage, e.g., with race horses and hunting 
dogs." 

8. Preservatives and Cure 

Watching and physical punishment of the 
young. Strict supervision of their reading 
and absolute intolerance of any papers or 
books suggestive of evil. Utmost care regard- 
ing their rare admission to balls and shows. 

Life in the country coupled with steady, 
hard physical labor. 

[174] 



« • 

Long walks and attractive studies. — Swim- 
ming and other outdoor hard physical exer- 
cise. Girls must avoid tight-lacing, and boys 
tight-fitting drawers and trousers. Close cor- 
sets, besides hindering the proper develop- 
ment of the upper organs and the circulation 
of the blood, force the blood downward, which 
then unduly stimulates the sexual organs. 

Watch not only the little bed, but even the 
cradle. If a bad habit is once detected, its 
development must at once be hindered. In 
case of well-founded doubt, children must not 
be left alone in their rooms; but, if necessary, 
father or mother must sleep with them, so as 
to take from them all opportunity of indulg- 
ing in vicious habits. This is irksome indeed, 
but success is compassed only at the cost of 
sacrifices. Accustom children to evacuate the 
bladder before retiring, and to go to bed only 
when overcome by sleep after much exercise. 
Dr. J. B. Fonssagrives laid much stress on 
the children sleeping at all seasons with their 
arms out of the bedclothes. 

Salt is the only harmless condiment, as it 
excites the secretion of the digestive tube 
without in any way disturbing the nervous 

[175] 



mx 



system. Coffee, tea, and alcoholic drinks are 
harmful. 

Professor Hegar of Freiburg (Breisgau) 
says: "A strong will can subdue sexual ex- 
citement. Avoid whatever arouses the sexual 
passion, and stir up other activities. Per- 
form mental or physical labor; cold douches 
or baths are much to be recommended; like- 
wise light suppers taken long before retiring, 
hard beds and light bed covers. 

"Thou canst, because thou must." 

Marcus Aurelius said: "Vir sis et castus," 
of which the proper rendering is, "Be thou 
chaste that thou mayest be a man." 

"Keep your will habitually firmly bent on 
good, and confirm it by repeated acts. Keep 
your understanding active on topics innocent, 
interesting, and elevating. Keep your imag- 
ination clean, so far as it lies under the 
dominion of your will. Keep your eyes from 
the curious study of objects unchaste and 
provocations of evil desire. You cannot help 
seeing many such; you need not stare at them 
and con them over." x 

1 Four-Square, or the Cardinal Virtues, by Joseph Rick- 
aby, S.J. 

[176] 



"All history testifies that the true civiliza- 
tion of any race or country rises or falls with 
the restraints imposed on the passion of lust; 
no polygamous nation has ever been more than 
half-civilized. " l 

Whoso wants to keep from dissoluteness 
and from sacrificing his whole life's happiness 
must avoid the first wrong step, the first 
sexual aberration. " Continuous pressure and 
gradual familiarization can warp man to any 
sin." — "The first step includes all sequent 
steps." 2 

With lewdness as with intemperance, the 
first indulgence awakens a want which was 
asleep, the germ of an instinct dormant until 
then. Hence, both moral and physical purity 
is a very real and sacred thing which both 
sexes must guard most carefully. 

As Dr. Hoffmann observes, the sexual in- 
stinct depends mainly on the impressions the 
mind and the feelings receive through the 
eyes and the ears. Such as arouse sensuality 
must therefore be eschewed and barred. 

1 Moral Principles and Medical Practice (pp. 108, 125), by 
Rev. C. Coppens, S.J. 
2 Francis Thompson, Essays; Finis Coronat Opus. 
[177] 



JZbttcaUni} h* Tfinxity 



9. Crusade against Immorality in Italy 
and in France 

In 1894 was founded in Turin a League 
against Pornography (or immoral literature, 
pictures, print, etc.), transformed into the 
League for Public Morality in 1899. Similar 
societies were organized since in most other 
cities of Italy. In 1905 representatives of all 
these leagues formed a Central Italian Board 
of Public Morality with headquarters in 
Turin. Since 1896 Prof. Rudolph Bettazzi 
has edited the Bolletino Mensile of the League. 
Years ago an organization against white 
slavery was founded with headquarters in 
London. At Turin there is such a Catholic 
organization, which is affiliated to the na- 
tional one. There is also a Protestant Italian 
association named Amiche della giovane. 

Professors Pinard and Dufresne, etc., of the 
French Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophy- 
laxis, endeavored in 1902 to enlist with them 
priests, rabbis, and preachers. 

The very Rev. J. Fonssagrives lectured be- 
fore this society against public teaching of 
sexual matters, and he succeeded in bringing 

[178] 



JlWfe* 0t% l^ttTtty 



over most of them to his side. The Italian 
Lega di Publica Moralita never entertained the 
idea of collective teaching. 

Mothers above all can imbue their sons with 
deep respect for woman; sons tenderly love 
their mothers; hence the latter can disclose 
to them motherhood's marvelous work. 1 

Religious instruction rears, elevates, super- 
naturalizes; but the wisely formulated re- 
ligious instruction has for its object to 
convince youths to maintain themselves 
intact, biding the time they will have the 
right to use those physical energies of which 
they will have to render an account to God, 
as of all the other endowments the Creator 
gave them in trust. 

Books on Purity 

Among the many works bearing on purity 
those of the following authors deserve special 
mention: F. Blackewell, G. M. Kendrick, 
Oesterling, John Stuart Blackie, Payot, Dr. 
Hofulard, Kraft-Ebing, Sir Jas. Paget, Seved 
Ribbing, Sir Lionel, Beate Acton, Paul Good, 

1 (Turman, Initiatives Feminin., Lecoffre, 1905.) 'Tis aft- 
surd to fight a foe without knowing him. 

[179] 



^Sibncating hi ^nxitQ 



Father Ruiz, Dr. Surbled, La Vie de Jeune 
Homme; Professor Fournier, M. D., for 
youths of eighteen; Dr. Burlureaux for girls 
of sixteen; the Self and Sex series; Dr. 
W. Lee Howard, Start Your Child Right. 
L'Education de la Puret6 by J. Fonssagrives, 
fifteenth edition, translated into Italian 
(now in its second edition), by P. C. Rinaudo 
and into Spanish by Don Enrico Reig y 
Casanovia, who, like Dr. Howard, is a 
strong opponent of mixed high schools. 
Jeunesse et Purete, by Rev. Father Broussolle, 
Paris: P. TSqui, 1911. 

10. The Physiology of the Whole Body 

In the Medical Record, of June 2, 1906, 
Dr. Denslow Lewis says: I want the young 
people throughout our country to know the 
truth. They must know hygiene and physi- 
ology. Girls must know how their indiscretion 
may result in conception or venereal infection. 
Quoting Dr. Morrow: ( The entire system of 
our educational machinery is organized upon 
a basis of silence and secrecy in regard to the 
reproductive function, which, from a biologic 

[180] 



point of view, is the most important function 
of the body. It would appear that the aim 
of parents and instructors is to give the young, 
when launched into the world, a brevet of 
ignorance of all matters pertaining to sex and 
sexual hygiene. 1 

Necessity of Sexual Enlightenment 

Dr. S. A. Knopf says, in the New York 
Medical Record: "I believe in educating the 
people at large by lectures and pamphlets 
and in instructing school children and adoles- 
cents concerning the nature of these diseases. 
The teaching in schools and colleges might be 
done by the school physicians, and the lessons 
adapted to the age and understanding of the 
pupils. 

If there is impropriety, wrong-doing, or 
danger, why has the boy not been warned 
against gratifying his sexual passion? He has 
been told about brushing his teeth and taking 
a bath; he knows he must learn his lessons 
and conduct himself with decorum at the 
table. Let us inculcate principles of honor 

1 " Ignorance may be said to be the common mother of all 
our miseries.'' — Bishop Spalding, Things of the Mind, p. 98. 

[1S1] 



^Ebntttiing iff T^ntil% 



toward the young girl, and let us explain re- 
garding the danger of venereal infection. 

With the girl, the need of actual knowledge 
is of even greater importance. One mistake on 
her part, if discovered, blasts her reputation 
for life. Indiscretion in the boy is ruin for 
the girl. She is never forgiven. Moreover, 
in addition to the danger of masturbation, 
unnatural practices, and venereal infection, 
there is the liability of conception, which 
usually means criminal abortion or infanti- 
cide, and too often a life of prostitution. In 
my own personal experience, I have known 
of hundreds of cases where ignorance has been 
responsible for the ruin of the young girl. 
Many a worthy family of high social position 
mourns, to-day, the loss of a loved one who 
might have been the wife of an honest man, 
had she been told regarding the possibilities. 
There are men and women in exclusive so- 
ciety who have wealth, reputation, and honor, 
and yet their lives are embittered by the 
knowledge, which they hide from the world, 
that a daughter, through lack of instruction 
and warning, is now an outcast.* 

Our society of " Sanitary and Moral Pro- 
[182] 



phylaxis" should inaugurate a campaign of 
education, a crusade against ignorance. 

Young men should be taught that the re- 
productive function is given for a higher 
purpose than mere sensual gratification, that 
it is susceptible of control, discipline, and 
proper direction. 

Education is our strongest weapon, and the 
most rational means at our command in the 
fight, not only against the venereal diseases, 
but also against rape, criminal abortion, in- 
fanticide, marital infelicity, divorce, prostitu- 
tion, and sexual perversions, and crimes. It 
will diminish masturbation, and save many a 
young girl from seduction. It will restrict 
illegitimacy; it will tend to make the marriage 
contract a surety against the transmission of 
disease and the perpetuation of degeneracy; 
it will help in remedying the alcohol question; 
it will add to the health and happiness of 
humanity. 

Ignorance has been the curse of the past; 
knowledge will prove the salvation of the 
future. Fearlessly, confidently, resolutely, let 
us bear the great light of truth into the world. 

[183] 



Jlbntatimg h* ^intil^ 



11. Against Prudery 

Coventry Patmore observes in his essays, 
that there is less purity among those girls 
who, through prudery of their parents or 
tutors, have been deprived of the teaching of 
the Blessed Virgin's share in the Incarnation. 

To quiet a troubled imagination, may we 
not recall the Immaculate Virgin's chaste 
reply to the Angel of the Annunciation? 

Many girls learn sexual matters surrepti- 
tiously through maids, books, or corrupt com- 
panions. Their parents bring or let them be 
brought to theatres, which, as a rule, repre- 
sent adultery and the fascination of vice. 1 
Advise older boys, adolescents inclined to 
vicious habits, to read sound books on the 
subject. 

With Sylvanus Stall we believe the first 
years before puberty are the timely ones for 
these lessons. Waiting till after puberty 
might find their imaginations, if not also their 
bodies, polluted by the evil, and the mystery 
of reproduction might have forever lost for 
them every character of sanctity. Like him 

l Fisiologia delta donna, Montegazza. 
[184] 



W^xt^matnitt^ *m& JH**Ftnunt 



3 



we came across many ruined through lack of 
timely instruction, and never knew any one 
harmed by too early enlightenment. The 
right moment, however, depends somewhat 
upon the intellect, character, etc., of each 
child. 

12. Timely Forewarning and Religious 
Restraint Absolutely Necessary 

Unless our youths acquire, by a wise preven- 
tive education, a bulwark of good habits against 
the surprises of instinct, the best qualities 
will be enslaved by sexual predominance. 1 

Dr. Kornig lays much stress on the influ- 
ence of religious principles for this preventive 
education; and Professor Carlo Fedeli, of the 
Medical Faculty of Pisa, says: "Senza reli- 
gione non si da castitd": there is no chastity 
without religion. He bases this maxim upon 
his experience: all physicians, all naturalists, 
all philosophers, and all men of good will and 
sound judgment will back the truth of this 
maxim: religious restraint is the foundation 
of the whole moral edifice. 

^ppolito Nievo, " Le Confesioni di un Ottogenario," Vol.1, 
p. 115, 2d ed. Florence. An anti-clerical authority. 

[185] 



^bntatxttg In Ijj^utUq 



The young man's chastity, which makes 
him worthy of his destined consort, is the 
most beautiful preparation for marriage. It 
(and I ought to enlarge upon this as biologist 
and physician) constitutes the strongest guar- 
antee of the health of the family, and hence 
of the physical welfare of mankind. "And 
the chaste father shall not be dogged by the 
remorse that his children are suffering 
because of the sins of his youth" — Dr. 
Hoffmann. 

13. Dangers to Chastity (Of Girls) 

Scant wages. Extravagant dressing. Costly 
toilets. 

Lack of wholesome pleasures. 

To remedy this last evil a splendid Peoples' 
Palace has been built in London and pop- 
ular amusement halls in Dresden. Mental 
recreations turn from sexual pleasures. 

Lectures on education, health, and the 
well-being of the people alternate with musi- 
cal concerts, recitations, and plays at those 
assemblies of the young folk. 

[186] 



^att^txm t& (^JptxHig 



Dangers for Boys and Girls 

Selling flowers or papers on the street at 
night. 

Delaying to answer the calls of nature; e.g., 
during school. 

Carrying messages, papers or telegrams to 
dens of vice. 

Companions. The good may become bad. 
Housekeepers who lay in a barrel of apples 
don't content themselves with an occasional 
look at the top of the barrel to remove the 
rotten ones. Parents must question children 
day by day about their chums' actions and 
conversations; nor let boys and girls play out 
of their sight in alleys, basements, barns, or 
in lonesome and dark places. 

How guilty are those parents who, under 
the plea of distracting or amusing their chil- 
dren, take them once or twice a week to 
theatres or shows, where they are exposed 
to the two-fold fever of music and of scenic 
representation. The same blame attaches to 
the toleration of sensational literature. 

As good books help making saints, bad ones 
largely share in producing devils incarnate. 

[187] 



^bntalin$ in fistiig 



But scenic representation more vividly 
affects the mind and leaves a more lasting 
impression than mere reading does. Hence, 
as all kinds of crimes are portrayed and 
condoned in many moving-picture shows, 
are these not very factories of criminals? 
Therefore city authorities should everywhere 
exercise a rigorous censorship and mercilessly 
exclude all objectionable films. 

" Light is the normal excitant of the retina, 
but a profusion of light hurts that marvelous 
membrane, so that it becomes incapable of 
perceiving it, whereby it may forever lose its 
power of perception. Repeated shocks which 
spontaneous or provoked emotions impress 
upon the brain may likewise harmfully affect 
the integrity of reason and health." — Popular 
Discourses on Hygiene, Amusements, Theatrical 
Plays, Music, etc., by J. B. Fonssagrives, M.D. 

14. Extravagance in Dressing 

Love of dress is fraught with the great- 
est dangers, not only to the health of mind and 
body, but even to chastity itself. The statis- 
tics of prostitution abundantly prove the 
correctness of this assertion, and show the 

[188] 



P<utg*r9F la (§fya&litQ 



ruin and vanity of mothers who inoculate 
their daughters with this ridiculous rivalry 
almost with the first words they are taught 
to lisp. 

Limit the outward adornment of girls to 
the requirements of comfort and scrupulous 
neatness. 

Children's Parties 

Of late years a new and horrible rivalry 
has arisen — that of children's parties. Each 
fond matron seeks to excel her acquaintances 
in the mimic pomp and fashion displayed . . . 
the newspapers pander to the unnatural per- 
formance . . . children from eight to thir- 
teen are thus initiated in the mysteries of 
dissipation, including flirtation and liaison. 
Diabolical inventions: Whom the Gods wish 
to destroy, they first make mad. (Needless 
to add, that kissing games, post-office play- 
ing, birthday parties, may all prove very 
dangerous in this respect.) 

15. The Nude 

As there are but few persons so wholly free 
from the enthralling empire of the sexual, 

[189] 



^hntaUng l& fttxtty 



those who strive for higher things will not only 
fight against the multiplicity of allurements of 
the flesh, but they will strive to lessen and 
remove the occasions of sensual excitement. 

Modern art suggestively focuses atten- 
tion on the body, to the detriment of the soul; 
whereas in true art the physical ministers to the 
spiritual which it enshrines and consecrates. 

16. Sending to Bed as Punishment 

It is wrong, unreasonable, and dangerous to 
send lazy or disobedient children to bed to 
punish them. Many thus acquire bad habits. 

Rather aim at tiring the children before 
bedtime. Eight or nine hours sleep is plenty 
for them. When they are through with their 
school and home tasks, have them sing hymns 
and good old songs, which are a powerful 
means to drive off foolish or bad thoughts and 
to inspire the young with noble sentiments 
and high resolves. 

Where the divine art of music cannot be 
indulged in, other arts may be resorted to 
such as penmanship competition, drawing, 
painting, elementary cabinet making, taking 
apart and resetting old watches or clocks. 

[190] 






(§0~^£hncalitm 



Parents may impose as a penance or assign 
as a reward the learning of a good poem, of a 
catechism or Bible history lesson (the story 
of Joseph of Egypt, of Susanna, of Daniel, 
of Eleazar), a section of the Sermon on the 
Mount, a parable or some other portion of 
the New Testament. 

17. Dangers of Co-education 

Rinaudo observes in a note to his transla- 
tion regarding co-education that in the mixed 
University of Geneva, some time ago, many girl- 
students were found in a delicate condition. 1 

We have it on the best authority that 
numerous female students boarding at our 
American universities, and having no rela- 
tives in those respective university cities, 
leave those institutions on Friday evening and 
return on Monday morning without being 
asked any questions. 

Separating the Sexes 

In behalf of girls, even more strongly than 
of boys, Dr. Cooke pleads for early isolation 

1 We heard of like cases in American co-educational insti- 
tutions. 

[191] 



^EhmcaUu^ in |J*tri£|i 



of the sexes — not that complete separation 
which would exclude children of the same 
family from innocent and legitimate partici- 
pation in childish sports and pleasures, but 
isolation in sleeping and dressing, and in all 
those little matters which expose the differ- 
ences of conformation, and are capable of 
suggesting ideas of curiosity and comparison. 
This isolation should begin as early as the 
fourth or fifth year, and rigid supervision, 
with lessons in propriety, should be main- 
tained thereafter. Erotic propensities often 
manifest themselves very early, and, if as 
early detected, can ^>e easily controlled. 

" Co-education has never been popular in 
England. It has been tried on a small scale, 
but the experiment has not proved successful 
enough to warrant any wider extension of the 
system. Recently, during the annual meet- 
ing of the Private Schools Association, in 
London, it was the subject of a heated dis- 
cussion, and the overwhelming sentiment of 
the masters in attendance was clearly opposed 
to it. The Rev. Dr. Burns, of Plymouth, 
said: " Nature demands the separation of the 
sexes early in life. The best educationalists 

[192] 



(&&J^hntali&n 



in America are against co-education, and 
public opinion is inclining in the same direc- 
tion. It is one of the American people's 
silly dreams. They are like children, trying 
experiments with new theories.' } 

Women educationalists present at the meet- 
ing were the principal defenders of co-educa- 
tion, insisting that it takes a lot of nonsense 
out of girls' heads, produces healthier rela- 
tions between boys and girls, and in ad- 
dition is exercising salutary restraint on the 
former. 

The president of the association declared: 
"It would be impossible to carry out co-educa- 
tion without enormous dangers, as is shown 
both in America and here. Even if this diffi- 
culty did not exist, the sexes are bound to 
deteriorate by familiarity early in life. The 
sexes are antagonistic, and the best way to 
preserve the race is to encourage this." 1 

President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark Uni- 
versity, having stated that ten years after 
graduation, fifty per cent of our college women 
remain unmarried, and that therefore the 
college education of men and women must 

Report quoted by America. 
[193] 



lEhtmttm^ h* ;jJtt*ii|t 



in the future be conducted along different 
lines and with special reference to the needs 
of each sex and to their special functions in 
society, goes on to say: 

"The bottom facts, however, from which we 
can never get away, are that men and women 
differ in their bodily constitution, their organs, 
their biological and their physiological func- 
tions. This divergence is most marked and 
sudden in the pubescent period, when by 

ALMOST WORLD-WIDE CONSENT BOYS AND GIRLS 

separate more or less, and, during this 
most critical period of inception, lead lives 
more or less apart for a few years, until the 
ferment of body and mind, which results in 
the maturity of the functions then born and 
culminating in nubility, has done its work. 
At twelve or fourteen, brothers and sisters 
develop interests more independent of each 
other than before; their home occupations, 
plays, games, tastes differ. We should respect 
this law, and not forget that motherhood is 
a very different thing from fatherhood, so 
that neither sex should copy or set patterns 
for the other, but each should play its part 
in the great harmony. 

[194] 



(Q&^hnt&li&n 



". . • With real progress the sexes diverge. 
. • . Education should push sex distinctions 
to their uttermost, make boys more manly 
and girls more womanly. . . . Sex tension 
is one of the subtlest and most potent of all 
psychological agencies. Each ought to find 
the presence of the other the tonic and stim- 
ulus to its very highest and best achievements, 

but INCESSANT AND PROLONGED FAMILIARITY 
WEARS DOWN THIS IDEALIZING INFLUENCE TO 
THE DULL MONOTONY OF THE DAILY ROUTINE. 1 

In his preface to Dr. Shields' The Education 
of our Girls, Cardinal Gibbons says: "The 
alleged advantages of co-education are more 
than outweighed by its disadvantages . . . 
serious objection has been urged by recent 
authorities against the practice of teaching 
both sexes the same subjects by the same 
methods in the same institution." 

And Bishop J. L. Spalding wrote: " What- 
ever w r e teach boys, girls should be taught 
the science and art of education itself; for 
three-fourths of them will become mothers, 
and education is a mother's chief business, 
in which if she fails, schools and other agencies 

l Munsey's Magazine, February, 1906. 
[195] 



Jihtttalht®, t& Tfuxit^ 



are powerless to form true men and women.' ' 
Things of the Mind, pp. 87 and 88. 

Need we say that there is no course on 
education in our co-educational institutions? 

Nature points the way. Boys and girls 
take to different games. Hence they should be 
separated. The practice of youths and maidens 
playing basket-ball, etc., together at public high 
schools may stimulate the sexual instinct. 

Says Dr. William Lee Howard in Start 
Your Child Right: "When the girl becomes 
ruined, whose fault is it? No public high 
school is free from those stories. One example : 
On March 18, 1909, at the California Club, 
Los Angeles, speaking on the subject 'How 
Shall We Cherish and Protect American 
Young Womanhood? ' Dean McCormack of 
the local Episcopal Church said: 'I believe 
that co-education in the high schools is a 
mistake; that the familiarity of the sexes 
which surrounds the association of boys and 
girls is oftentimes productive of much harm. 
... I learned from physicians that there were 
six pregnancies in the Pasadena high schools 
last year/ 1 

x See Appendix, p. 308. 
[196] 



(Qv^lSibntaHati 



"Dr. Laura A. C. Hughes stated in a news- 
paper interview why she sought election to 
the Boston school committee. She said: 
'My platform is my desire to help correct 
the very bad moral conditions which prevail 
in the public schools at present. I want to 
be elected, because I think as a woman doctor 
I could help remedy these extremely bad 
conditions, as women teachers would tell 
me things that they would never tell any 
man/ 

"Such arguments, and they could be mul- 
tiplied, are surely strong reasons for the segre- 
gation of the sexes in educational matters. 
The public must know these hard facts, as 
they will not correct them until they have 
become matters of general recognition. 

" After segregation of the sexes in the schools 
we can proceed along proper educational 
lines to develop the best in the girls — and 
the boys. Not otherwise. 

'This is far more important than mind train- 
ing. Physicians well know that the majority 
of American high school girls are physically 
unfit to struggle with the cares of wifehood 
and maternity. They have not been given 

[197] 



^hntalitt^ tit |Itt:rifcf 



that proper hygienic — sex hygiene — train- 
ing which establishes a foundation for a life 
of physical well-being. " 

18. Violent, Nerve-Straining Exercise 
Injurious to Maidens l 

If girls value their future health, if they 
wish to be happy, wise, and joyous mothers 
instead of women cast off by husbands who 
cannot understand complaining and unwilling 
wives, they should remain quiet during the 
menstrual period and strictly avoid all ex- 
ercise. 

A great many married women are living 
unhappily or divorced, because they attended 
dances, school-receptions, theaters in the 
first stages of puberty, or because, through 
shame of backing out of a promised tennis 
match, they played at a time when their 
wombs were delicate and engorged organs. 

Alas, many girls do exercise at a time when 
there is great risk of distorting or displacing 
the womb, so that in wifehood they suffer the 
torments of the damned! Those torturing 

This whole number is taken from Dr. W. L. Howard's 
Start Your Child Right. 

[198] 



instruments, the pessaries, are often the secret 
medals won by girls who entered into athletic 
games while menstruating. They should be 
proof against all teasing and refuse with 
determination. 

Half of the doctors and all the cursed patent 
compounds and medicines would go out of 
existence, if the American girl were properly 
taught her own physiology, hygienic laws of 
sex function, and control of natural impulses. 

Ill-informed teachers say a girl should try 
vaulting, high jumping, sprinting, and broad 
jumping and make an effort to reach the 
record of man. These forms of exercise are 
dangerous and injurious to the growing girl, 
especially to the American girl. Many a girl 
is brought to the operating table in conse- 
quence of broad jumping and hurdling while 
at school, or perhaps dancing for hours when 
she should have been in bed. 

Many of these would-be athletes think 
they have only temporarily injured their nerv- 
ous systems. It all comes out when the strain 
of maternity and marital duties press upon 
them. 

Girls should do no physical work except 
[199] 



TEhneaUn^ la fntitQ 



walking and swimming for the first two years 
nearing puberty. This statement may sound 
radical to those who do not understand, but 
it is founded upon the experience of all able 
medical men. Probably the best form of 
exercise for girls is swimming. Walking is a 
normal, body-developing exercise. But the 
upright posture if long kept up is liable to 
have a bad effect upon the internal organs — 
that is, upon the reproductive organs. So 
let the walking be regular but interrupted by 
periods of short rests. Fencing is excellent 
for the fully developed woman, but inad- 
visable for the girl. 

Any form of exercise that causes any undue 
nervous excitement, such as personal contests 
or basket-ball games between rival schools, 
is too great a strain upon the developing 
nervous system; for in the girl every organ 
and tissue is trying to get adapted to the new 
life, and this will never bloom with all its 
rightful beauty and strength if deprived of 
one minute's growth of nerve power. Re- 
served nerve force is the great physical 
capital for the girl to store up for her day of 
drawing on this principal. 

[200] 



The unavoidable nervous excitement ac- 
companying contests, where personal or team 
efforts are strained to win from rivals, takes 
force and activity from growing nerve cells, 
and the result will be a riotous rebellion in 
some part of the girl's physiologic functions. 
It may be delayed until later life, but it will 
come, for nature never forgives robbery or 
insult. 

When your child becomes fretful, inatten- 
tive, and cannot sleep at night, as a rule the 
cause is not overstudy. Look to her strain 
of some coming physical contest. Stop her 
exercise, see that all nervous strain is avoided : 
see that she sleeps, eats, rests. Avoid medi- 
cine, drugs, soda-fountain drinks, tonics, cocoa 
leaves extracts — chloral, bromides — as all 
these proprietary " tonics" contain deadly 
drugs, morphine, cocaine. The desire to 
emulate young men in the more violent forms 
of exercise — as is done in more than one 
woman's college — should be suppressed. 
Those teachers who refuse to acknowledge 
that there is a vast difference between the 
sexes and a great one during adolescence 
should be dismissed from school management. 

[201] 



^bntating ta ^tttitji 



Nervous wrecks are caused by daily gym- 
nastic feats. Building muscle is not develop- 
ing a woman. 

19. Evils of Mental Pollution and Flirtation 

When a young girl has acquired in solitude 
the theoretical knowledge of sexual sentiment, 
the hour will always come when desire will 
deliver her to the temptations of the seducer. 
On the other hand, if the imagination remains 
pure, desire is merely an indeterminate un- 
easiness, merely a sorrow capable of irritating 
the nerves, of causing sleeplessness, or, at 
most, a few tears. 

The habit of coquetry, besides the moral 
defloration caused by frequently soliciting 
passion and then repressing it — moral onan- 
ism — imparts something arrogant and dom- 
ineering to the girl's character. Desire is 
really dangerous, only when it brings volup- 
tuous pictures incessantly before the im- 
agination; hence how baneful are theatrical 
representations, love-romances, city scandals 
as detailed in the daily papers, and confi- 
dences of young married women. 

[202] 



f %%w yafali 



* 



GW Pitfalls 

Dr. N. F. Cooke thus addresses the young 
women: "The thought that you are deliber- 
ately surrendering yourself to the power of 
any man is so startling that, if you believed 
it, you would well-nigh be exempt from 
danger; for you would certainly guard the 
fortress with a vigilance that no strategy 
could surprise. 

" The danger then consists in the indulgence 
of pleasures which seem pure and innocent in 
themselves, but which, alas! are the poisoned 
arrows that destroy the very power of re- 
sistance. In point of fact, however, it makes 
but little difference whether the mere phys- 
ical virginity be lost or not, if the maidenly 
purity of heart be gone, if all the degrees of 
sensuality, save the mere physical consum- 
mation, have been tasted. 

" Remember that you have actually commit- 
ted the sin which you have wilfully entertained, 
desired, and cherished in your heart. Repent 
of it in secret humiliation and sin no more. 

1 Young women, if you knew how lightly you 
are estimated by those who are so earnestly 

[203] 



^jhsratttt$ in ^Jttrii^i 



and passionately intent on your favors, you 
would certainly deny them, if the effort cost 
your lives. There are degrees in libertinism: 
the affectionate caress, the wanton impro- 
priety, the deliberate seduction; however 
humiliating the assertion may be, it is never- 
theless a fact, that these several stages are 
at the command of him to whom you sur- 
render the outposts of your purity. 'If 
woman hesitates, she is lost.' 

" History shows that the more innocent a girl 
may be at heart, the more sure is she to fall if 
she surrender the advance guards of her honor. 

" Lessons in both dancing and music should 
begin early in life, and be made tasks rather 
than pleasures, and all occasions in which 
these accomplishments lead to dissipation or 
excitement must be scrupulously avoided, 
until the great physiological change from girl 
to woman has been accomplished. 

" Attending balls and theatres, perusing 
romances and newspapers, luxuriating in 
drawing-rooms, should be forbidden fruit to 
every young person, prohibited positively, as 
strychnine and arsenic, not even allowed as 
subjects of discussion or argument, as they 

[204] 



tt®&ipaytT# 



teem with advertisements and news items of 
the most revolting and indecent character." 1 

Bishop J. L. Spalding fully agrees with this 
late distinguished Chicago physician regarding 
newspapers. "The worst consequences of the 
newspaper habit may be seen in the young, for 
whom each morning, like a daily meal, accounts 
of vice and crime are served up, to make them 
incapable of admiration, reverence, and awe. 
What father employs burglars, murderers, and 
adulterers, or quacks, liars, and sophists, as 
tutors for his children? A man's daily read- 
ing, like his habitual conversation, is a 
symbol of his life and character. 

"The newspaper is the sewer of average 
opinion. It is well this should have issue, but 
when we drink or bathe we seek pure fountains 
and clear streams." 2 

20. Necessity of a Crusade against Alcoholism 
and Venereal Diseases 

Let some philanthropic person, or, better yet, 
the government, offer a prize for the best popular 

1 Satan in Society, by Dr. N. F. Cooke. 

2 Views of Education, pp. 33, 34, and 56 in Things of the 
Mind. 

[205] 



^l&ntalin^ tu l^nxitQ 



essays, one on how to prevent alcoholism, and one 
on how to combat venereal diseases as afflictions of 
the masses. The essay should be divided into sev- 
eral sections, adapted to children, to the adoles- 
cent, to man, and to woman. The best and most 
suitable essays submitted should be printed and 
distributed by the Government free or at cost. 

21. Prevalence of Gonorrhea, Tuberculosis, 
Syphilis and Insanity 

Neisser holds that, possibly with the excep- 
tion of measles, gonorrhea is the most wide- 
spread of all diseases. As to tuberculosis, 
three thousand die of it each day, or two 
each minute, in the world, and according to 
the present ratio, eight per cent die of it in 
the United States. 

Dr. Nogerath of New York, and Ricord, a 
leading physician in Paris, recently deceased, 
maintained that eighty per cent of the men 
are venereally stricken. 

Dr. John M. Maxwell, writing in the "Physi- 
cal Culture Magazine," also states that reliable 
statistics lead to the conclusion that eighty per 
cent of males bring upon themselves the disease 
in question before they are thirty; and that one- 

[206] 



tntttai ^xxtast* 



sixth of the whole population is infected with it, 
either acquired or hereditary. 

Hence, many girls, nowadays, are afraid 
of marrying, as they know that all their 
acquaintances who entered wedlock suddenly 
became ill and are not yet healed. 

Insanity is on the increase. In 1892, there 
was in the State of New York one insane person 
in every 337; now there is one in every 299. 

22. The Main Cause 

These three diseases most frequently spring 
from intemperance. Alcohol is respon- 
sible for more tuberculosis than any other 
cause. Careful statistics of tuberculous chil- 
dren in sanatoria show that one or both par- 
ents of most of them were addicted to the 
use of alcohol. Syphilis and gonorrhea, the 
worst and most widespread of diseases among 
adults, generally result from the sexual act 
preceded by excessive drinking. 

23. Blindness, Idiocy and Sterility result from 
Venereal Diseases 

Dr. S. M. Burnett, of Georgetown Uni- 
versity, believes that fifteen thousand of the 

[207] 



J^hntating I® Ij^nxtt^ 



fifty thousand blind persons in the United 
States lost their sight from gonorrheal infec- 
tion, involving a cost to the commonwealth 
of seven and one-half millions annually. 
Several millions more are spent on the 
care of the idiotic degenerate and pauper 
due to syphilitic parentage or direct syph- 
ilitic acquisition. " Fifty per cent of all 
involuntary childless marriages are due to 
gonorrhea." l 

Of 8272 insane entered at Bicetre from 1825 
to 1833, 326 became such through lewdness 
and venereal diseases, or about four per cent; 
and at Salpetriere twenty per cent of the 
insane women were prostitutes. 

Dr. Osier holds that all locomotor ataxia is 
traceable to syphilis. And Dr. H. J. Berkley 
of the Johns Hopkins University says in Mental 
and Nervous Diseases: 

" Syphilitic insanity is quite as frequent or 
even more common than general paresis 
(paralysis) and tabes dorsalis (locomotor 
ataxia). Insanity may result from syphilis 

*Dr. Kober, in " Suggestions concerning the Administra- 
tive Control of Venereal Disease/ ' Journal of the American 
Medical Association. 

[208] 



^tntxeai ^x&t*&t& 



as early as one month after infection, though 
in most cases it occurred three years after 
infection. M — "The time of onset of spinal 
syphilis is the same as that of cerebral syphi- 
lis, usually two to four years after infection." 1 

Sterility, a host of female troubles, and 
nervous diseases, spring mostly from man's 
sexual ailments which were apparently cured. 
It is a rare thing, today, when, owing to 
man's unbridled sexual dissipation, a pure girl 
of good family does not become infected by 
the poison of disease, and hence sickly and 
wretched. 

Dr. Nogerath called attention to latent 
gonorrhea which reappears after many years. 
He held that gonorrhea is incurable in man; 
after five, ten, and more years, it shows up 
again, and regularly infects the woman, caus- 
ing fifty per cent of the sterility, or, if con- 
ception occur, abortion, and a whole train of 
diseases follow. Doctors Saenger, Hennig, 
A. Martin, McDonald, Lawson Tait, and all 
noted women doctors, confirm Nogerath's 
opinions. 

x Dr. F. S. Pearce (Philadelphia College Professor) in 
Nervous Diseases. 

[209] 



^titrating In ^purit^t 



24. Dr. Max Gruber: Syphilis, its Nature, 
Symptoms 

Syphilis begins as a local disease, and unless 
cured by energetic remedies, spreads through- 
out the body. After some weeks noticeable 
symptoms appear which show that the whole 
body is affected: fevers, skin eruptions of 
various kinds on the outward skin, and espe- 
cially on the mucous membranes of the 
mouth, throat, etc. After some time these 
outward symptoms vanish; but, as a rule, 
reappear after six months. Such periods of 
latent disease alternate every three to six 
months: apparent cure and relapses. This 
secondary stage may last two, three, or even 
four years, and after this secondary stage, 
there is no certainty of cure. After ten and 
twenty years of apparent health, grave dis- 
eases may develop, in the brain, spine, and 
other internal vital organs, all traceable to 
the first infection; and tertiary syphilis often 
brings the stricken to a miserable end. Late 
researches show that syphilis helps to bring 
on two other dread diseases of the nervous 
system, tabes dorsalis (wasting of the spinal 

[210] 



xet 



marrow, locomotor ataxia) and progressive 
paralysis, the victims of which increase day 
by day. 

While syphilis causes an illness of many 
years, and poisons the existence also of those 
cured of it through the continual fear of its 
reappearance in its most frightful forms, it 
makes of the one affected therewith the most 
dangerous being to all those who surround 
him; in fact, during the whole primary and 
local period, as well as during the whole 
secondary stage, both in the passive and 
active state, he may communicate the infec- 
tion. It spreads most frequently through the 
sexual act, but also through the secretions 
of the mucous membranes of the mouth, — 
saliva, tears, and the blood itself, through 
little chaps of the skin, fingers, hands, etc. 
It is also communicated from sucklings to 
nurses and vice versa. 

; The vaccin taken from syphilitic children 
may give it to children vaccinated therewith. 
Tobacco-pipes, plates, spoons, cups, glasses, 
towels, combs, faucets, toys, tools, mouth- 
pieces, coins, lead-pencils wetted in the mouth, 
and musical instruments, toothpicks, tooth- 

[211] 



J£hnci&U%%$ l& ^»rit^ 



brushes, razors, pins, clothing, or any article 
on which the virus has been deposited, may 
inoculate the unwary. 

The worst evil is the disease entailed on the 
future generations, who inherit it either at 
their very conception, or who, without being 
syphilitic themselves, become through the 
parents' disease atrophied and die in the 
mother's womb, or are born feeble and die 
shortly after birth. 

A report of the medical academy of Paris 
composed of the foremost French physicians 
states that the appalling mortality among 
infants is due to hereditary syphilis. 

25. Gonorrhea 

From unlawful cohabitation springs an- 
other disease, whose untold misery and rav- 
ages resemble or even exceed those of syphilis 
because less observed and less combated; viz., 
gonorrhea. This contagious disease of the 
sexual organs (Tripperkrankheit), character- 
ized by slight local inflammations of the 
mucous membranes and suppurations, often 
causes lasting scars which bring about per- 
manent disorders; frequently, as the disease 

[212] 



^0tl0ttl^ta 



progresses, it affects the genital glands, and 
the inflammations resulting thence often bring 
about the loss of manhood. As the germ 
spreads through the body, it produces inflam- 
mations in the joints, in the valves of the 
heart, and it causes spinal troubles, which at 
times prove fatal. 

Gonorrhea is much more dangerous for 
women than for men. It leaves them defense- 
less; it spreads with an irresistible impetus 
throughout the whole sexual system, and 
when the infecting process has reached the 
internal organs, it is practically incurable. 
Even should it not have the malignant 
character, it will make women sterile, feeble, 
and invalids for life. Never again shall 
they recover the bloom of health, their full 
activity, their sense of former vigor. Their 
natural joy of personal vitality is forever 
destroyed. 

The mother's gonorrhea may prove fatal to 
the child. Should a little of this pus pene- 
trate the eye during labor, if not at once ren- 
dered harmless by thorough cure, it will cause 
an inflammation that will shortly terminate 
in blindness. Before the introduction of 

[213] 






^kneating in Ij^mtili^ 



Crede's preservative method, about eleven 
per cent of the cases of blindness were due to 
gonorrhea. 

Dr. Prof. Shroeder of Berlin says: "How 
frequently do physicians come across sickly 
and failing women whom they had known 
blooming with health and strength. How 
different is their married life from what they 
dreamt it would be." 

26. Syphilitic Symptoms — Oral Infection 

C. M. Whitney, M.D., of Boston, Mass., observes 
that syphilis in a most contagious form may exist in the 
mouth and throat (mucous patches), and show no evidence 
of its presence anywhere else. The disease may be trans- 
mitted by direct contact (of the lips, the tongue, or the teeth) 
or by the deposition of the saliva or virus from any lesion on 
any object touched by a denuded surface. And thousands 
of persons have thus become innocently infected (through 
kissing, through unsterilized surgical or dental instruments, 
etc.). To avoid the dangers from the oral lesions of syphilis 
the patient should be carefully instructed as to their nature, 
should refrain from using in common with others any objects 
which might pass from mouth to mouth, . . . and should 
not be permitted to have any dental work done during the 
first two years, unless the dentist is first warned of the 
presence of the disease. 

Dr. L. Duncan Bulkley gives, in his Syphilis Insontium 
(Syphilis of the Innocent), 9058 cases of extra-genital syphilis, 
of which 4753 were acquired from mouth lesions. 

Further symptoms of syphilis indicated by Dr. Whitney 
are enlargement of the glands behind the ears, etc., chorea 

[214] 



ji^pipii* 



(St. Vitus' dance), muscular twitchings, neuralgia, paralysis 
of the muscles of the eye and face, loss of hair (in patches) 
or eyebrows, crusts on the scalp, ulcers of various sizes any- 
where on the body resulting in deformity and scars, cracks 
and fissures on the tongue, scars of ulcerations especially 
at the corners of the mouth, persistent headaches, torment- 
ing neuralgia, leucoplakias (white patches on the tongue, the 
throat, etc.), the nails become dry and brittle, causing cracks 
or fissures, or they may even fall out, at times loss of sight 
and hearing, ulcers may form in the mouth, frequently caus- 
ing a perforation through the palate into the nasal cavity; 
by disease of the throat the voice may be impaired or lost, 
and a hoarse whisper may be all that is left of a once clear 
voice. 

Ninety-five syphilis patients out of every hundred who 
take a long treatment in the early stages can be cured and 
their offspring will be free from the disease. 

With opiniated individuals, who, because they see nothing, 
fear nothing, drink all the alcoholic liquors they desire, 
despite the fact that they have been forbidden to do so, and 
take only short courses of medicinal treatment, when some 
external cutaneous lesion manifests itself, ninety-five per 
cent show later symptoms, and their children may inherit 
the malady. 1 

27. Heredity 

The following chapter on heredity, taken 
from E. Legouv£'s book entitled the Fathers 
and Sons of the Nineteenth Century (Hetzel 
& Co., Paris), meditated by young men has 
proved of great assistance to them. 

1 The Mouth Lesions of Syphilis and the Dangers arising 
therefrom, by Dr. C. M. Whitney in May, 1911, Dental Cosmos. 

[215] 



T&hntttting in ^ttrit^ 



Two gentlemen had become intimate 
through the friendship of their sons. The 
older of these, Count Octavius, son of the 
duke of Cand6, engaged to a most charming 
girl, suddenly became ill. His friends were 
forbidden to see him. They were anxious to 
inquire of his father, but he kept indoors. 
There wasn't a whisper as to the nature of 
his illness. Thereupon the chum's parent 
made bold to go to the Cand6 palace to ob- 
tain news of Octavius' condition. He had 
passed through one apartment when a door 
opened and the duke came forward. 

"It is you!" he cried upon seeing me. 
"Well! as God's justice sends you . . . enter 
and see! This isolation is upsetting my 
brain." 

I followed him, frightened. I had gazed 
on countenances disfigured by pain, but on 
such a one, never. His was an inexplicable 
ensemble of despair, pangs, and shame! His 
eyes, dry and bloodshot from the previous 
night's watching, stared at me. Not a trace 
of the elegant gentleman was left; his hair 
was unkempt, and his dress disorderly. At 
this sight my heart filled with poignant sor- 

[216] 



f|*r*Mtg 



row, and in spite of myself, I burst into tears 
and sobs, as I threw myself into his arms. 

"You weep/' said he with bewildered air; 
"but do you know why? What are you think- 
ing of? That I may lose my son? That he 
is to die just when life is opening for him? 
Ah! were it only this, that were nothing!" 

And clutching my arm, he pulled me into 
his son's chamber; he opened the screen, and 
my eyes fell upon the sufferer. 

I drew back. His face was covered as if 
with leprosy, which spread up to his half- 
closed eyes. 

"Yes, yes," cried the duke in despair; "be- 
hold him whose beauty all men praised! Lo! 
the handsome youth whom his affianced so 
admired yesterday; behold him blind, deaf and 
dumb. . . . Why, alas! why is he deprived 
of speech and consciousness, and why is he 
groaning under the evil which will kill him? 
Ah, it is horrible, is it not? And there is 
something more horrible still, — the disease he 
is stricken with he has inherited it from me!" 

"From you!" 

"Yes, from me! It is I who am his mur- 
derer!" 

[217] 



^kntaling in ^ttrtt^ 



"But you are frantic with grief, out of your 
mind. Look at this robust body! what an 
exuberance of life!" 

"Ah, yes, yes, God spares us, only to pun- 
ish us in what we have dearer than ourselves! 
that is the secret of his justice!" 

"But of what justice are you speaking, of 
what crime?" 

"My crime, mine! That of my foolish 
youth which endeavored to stir up all the 
scandals of the last century. . . . I was young, 
rich, a duke, and instead of appreciating and 
meriting all those titles by work and a useful 
life, I believed it a glory to plunge into cor- 
ruption, as some fools walk into the fire, sing- 
ing and laughing at the danger. I aspired to 
the heroism of vice; but was there no fear 
of punishment? No. The shameful perils 
you brave don't strike you or at least don't 
kill. One issues alive from them, where not a 
few have lost their vigor and their lives; one 
boasts of one's strength which has vanquished 
and overcome the dangers of lechery, but 
later, after a year or so, when time and reflec- 
tion disgusted you with those follies, and you 
cannot recall them without blushing, all on a 

[218] 



sudden there arises before you as if it were a 
specter that threatens to strike you . . . not 
you! but that worshiped being, most beauti- 
ful and pure, for whom you dream of all kinds 
of pure joys! And on his face you read the 
traces of your sin! It is on his life that your 
lewdness makes an attempt. He inherits 
your shame! He dies for your fault! You 
are the assassin of the one you worship." 

The wretched man could not end these 
words, and he fell on a chair sobbing. I went 
to him and braced him, and sought to combat 
his fears and his remorse. I showed how 
much anent this heredity is uncertain and 
how much of that self-retrospection chimeri- 
cal. But he, raising himself and gripping my 
hand, said: 

"No! it is Dr. Verneuil himself who thus 
pronounced my sentence!" 

"The doctor! how?" 

"My son was five years old when he was 
first stricken with this strange disease. I 
called Dr. Verneuil. After examining the 
little lad, he took me apart and interrogated 
me regarding my past, asking a question which 
pierced my heart like a sword. I sought to 

[219] 



JZhnealing in ^ttrii^ 



recollect myself, as I had forgotten everything. 
. . . The foolish youth of one time was dead 
in me, so much so that I thought no more 
of him than one does of a minor brother of 
whom one is ashamed. Then indeed it struck 
me that I was to blame. I answered in all 
sincerity. 

"Dr. Verneuil eyed me and said: 'Ah! I 
understand/ and he departed, leaving me 
frightened, dismayed and tormented with a 
strange remorse. I had no more rest. For- 
merly youth's shifting imagination and my 
natural levity of character, easily inclined to 
hope, had suspended, or at least allayed my 
uneasiness, but as fast as I better understood 
the name of father, and the duty it imposes, 
the sentiment of my unworthiness became a 
torture to me. At times, people spoke of my 
compassion for the poor and wretched ... it 
was remorse! I devoted myself to them, 
hoping that my consecration would appease 
God and preserve my son. I even ransacked 
libraries, seeking in scientific works motives 
of consolation and hope. I looked through 
the archives of human diseases, I questioned 
them what kind of a thing was that dreadful 

[220] 



^txtbiii^ 



heredity, but everywhere, in men's books as 
well as on their lips, I read my son's doom. 

"Oh!" cried he at last in delirious accents, 
"if I loved him as I ought to, I should not 
crave his life, but his death; because then 
only would he live." . . . 

Space forbids to reproduce the scenes in 
which the duke is shown writhing with re- 
morse, hovering between hope and despair 
about his son's illness; but the climax of grief 
comes to him on the day when the young man, 
miraculously healed, writes a farewell letter to 
his betrothed. 

"Farewell," said the youthful duke, "fare- 
well, because I should be wretched if I married 
you — Yes, yes! you are not aware of what I 
heard in one of those nights of torpor and 
anguish in which my frightful sickness threw 
me. Do you know what the doctors whispered 
at my bedside believing that I was unconscious 
and dying? They uttered regarding my dis- 
ease a fatal word which settled everything: 
the word hereditary! 

"Do you understand now? Shall I de- 
liberately chain that adorable being to a 
mortally stricken wretch? Shall I bring her 

[221] 



^Ebntaiing iff T^uxii^ 



as a dowry an incurable disease? Condemn 
her to the same pangs? Give her sons stricken 
like myself? And that for my sake?" 

After his son's partial recovery the noble- 
man gave a note-book to his recent visitor in 
token of friendship. 

"Take this," said he; "it is the story of my 
anguish. Hand it to your son with my com- 
pliments when hell be nineteen years old. It 
will be my punishment, my expiation, and, I 
hope, his salvation." 

In due time the father of the family called 
his son: "My darling, you are rounding out 
nineteen years; you have reached the age of 
the passions. What empire will they wield 
over you? I know not. But this I do know, 
that this passion may, according to the heart 
of the man who experiences it, be fatal or 
beneficent, pure or shameful, guilty or holy. 
By its side rises and follows as a pale specter 
a companion which takes that man's name, 
which puts on his likeness, which pretends to 
be his sister and is nothing else than his 
deadly foe, because it dishonors him, depraves 
him, and winds up by killing him. That 
murderous companion, that fratricidal sister, 

[222] 



^*r*Mig 



is lust! Yes, her work is horrible, and what- 
ever she drags with her is so odious that, 
meseems, sheer self-respect ought to keep a 
person from falling into that mire. Yet, such 
is the case. Man's natural corruption makes 
self -degradation attractive. One does not 
fall into it at once, but one slips into it; one 
goes down by an unnoticeable slope; vanity 
drives one, example drags; one's dazzled 
senses precipitate one, and the best tempered 
soul lacks strength to fight all the tempta- 
tions. Thy tender love for me tells me: Thou 
art a son, preserve thyself for thy father. This 
manuscript will tell thee thou wilt be a father, 
preserve thyself for thy sons." Then I gave 
him the duke's manuscript that he might 
read it; and meanwhile I attentively watched 
him. As he glanced over those sad incidents, 
his face by turns grew pale and red, it con- 
tracted itself and grew tender. His soul was 
simultaneously seized with fear, grief and dis- 
gust. Having perused it, he handed it back 
to me without a word. 

"Your face and your very silence prove 
your deep impression. Both I and you must 
add something to this reading. I could have 

[223] 



^eZbncaUng t® l^ntily* 



pointed to the dissoluteness behind the pas- 
sion; the duke shows you behind the lewd- 
ness the hereditariness. Horrible word! 
Word almost new in its deep meaning. The 
science of our day, based on observation and 
aided by the most delicate and most precise 
instruments, studies the blood in its constit- 
uent elements and in its successive altera- 
tions; it takes the disease with which it is 
concerned, and follows it in its gradual phases 
and transformations, and meets it again at a 
distance of sixty years, through an interval of 
two or three generations and under a new 
form, as justice discovers and clutches a cul- 
prit altogether disguised nine hundred miles 
from the scene of his crime." 

Thus before our frightened imagination 
opened the deep and dark mysteries of heredi- 
tariness; not only the dreadful scourges of 
which the duke of Cande was the victim can 
be handed down; science teaches that in- 
sanity, tuberculosis, scrofula, gout, and that 
most dreaded foe of man, cancer, all — all are 
hereditary. Hence so many mysterious ques- 
tions rise up at the time of marriage. It 
will no longer do to inquire: Who are your 

[224] 



parents? Of whom were they born? How 
did they live? Another imperative question 
is: How did they diej? Beside heredity 
stands hereditariness. Beside the genealogical 
tree of the stock comes the pedigree of the 
health. On hope's heels tread anguish-bearing 
fears, and that is not all: science adds that 
there is not a single one of those scourges which 
bad conduct cannot produce in us, and there is 
not one of our excesses of gluttony, gambling, 
lasciviousness, which, when carried on for 
some time, may not become the germ of a 
hereditary disease! 

On the day a young man causes the cor- 
rupting germ to enter his blood, on that 
day he makes an attempt, not upon his 
own life, but on that of his children and his 
children's children, and upon the country 
itself. 

Upon casting that fatal germ into the world, 
he prolongs his crime through a series of gen- 
erations, and perhaps forever. Oh! it is hard, 
it is bitter to be sons of Adam! But I know 
of something more woeful still, and that is that 
we ourselves should become new Adams and 
bring forth an original sin. 

[225] 



^bntabittg iff ^ttrtfcg 



Young men when about to fall, think of the 
duke of Cande, and don't for a moment of 
foolishness spoil the purest and deepest joys 
of life, the joys of paternal love. Respect in 
yourself the future father. 

"The paralysis of children in nearly 
all cases is due to hereditary syphilis/ ' — 
Dr. Regis in Mercredi Medical, May 22, 
1895. 

28. The Nation's Shame 

The Surgeon-General of the U. S. Army 
stated that no less than 715 men, or nearly a 
whole regiment, were incapacitated for serv- 
ice every day in the year by diseases result- 
ing from immorality — a large increase over 
previous years. No less than 9,157 men were 
treated for this cause, or almost one in every 
six. 1 

With considerable reluctance, on account of 
the delicate character of the subject, we call 
attention to the official Reports just issued by 
the Surgeons-General of the United States 
Army and Navy. They reveal a condition of 
things which is not only a national shame but 

1 The Catholic Fortnightly Review, Vol. XIII, No. 6, 1906. 
[226] 



t pialivn's £>Uamt 



a national infamy. The number of men in the 
service suffering from the consequences of 
vicious lives surpasses that of any of the armies 
and navies of the civilized world. The peril, 
says the Surgeon-General of the Army, "has 
come to outweigh in importance any other 
sanitary question which now confronts the 
army, and neither our national optimism nor 
the Anglo-Saxon disposition to ignore a sub- 
ject which is offensive to public prudery can 
longer excuse a frank and honest confronta- 
tion of the problem." 

We may well hang our heads when we glance 
at the charts accompanying the statement, for 
whereas there are almost 200 such cases for 
every 1000 men in our army, there are only 
75 in the British — though that is reproach 
enough; 37 in the Japanese; 18 in the Prus- 
sian, and 15 in the Bavarian army. Ameri- 
cans are thus confronted with the fact that 
the Government is obliged to devote a large 
part of the army and navy budget to support 
and care for men who disgrace the uniform, 
who would be worse than useless in war, and 
who in time of peace encumber the hospitals 
in numbers that almost suggest a disastrous 

[227] 



%biifaUn®> I0 ^nxitQ 



battle. The blacks, we are told, are one-third 
worse than the whites, while the brown men 
in the Philippines are more than four times 
superior to their white conquerors. 

"It is now believed by most sociologists 
and sanitarians," continues the Report, "that 
the evil, being primarily a social one, can only 
be reached by a propaganda of public discus- 
sion and education." 

No! not public discussion! at least not so 
public as to be indiscriminate, which would 
rather attract the prurient and evil-minded 
than save the innocent and pure. Education! 
yes, but not an education that reveals to mere 
children the mysteries of life by school man- 
uals of physiology, which perhaps have had 
their share in this national disaster. There 
should be instruction, of course, but instruc- 
tion by prudent, pure-minded and competent 
men and women, the parents and teachers 
who are responsible to God for the care of 
youth; devoted guardians who will be ever 
watchful over their charges, who will wisely 
choose their time and shape their language so 
that in the effort to preserve they may not 
poison. 

[228] 



^^t pittUan'* £1%amt 



For Catholics, there must be added the 
sanction and the sacraments of their religion 
to sustain the instruction; and they must be 
impressed profoundly with the obligation of 
heeding God's mandate to be pure both in 
body and soul. For them fear of God and the 
use of the sacraments are the only prophy- 
lactics. 

The dreadful condition of things which is 
thus officially declared is not, as the Report 
says, "primarily social." That is avoiding 
the issue. Its source is the absence of re- 
ligion in the education of the rising genera- 
tion. We are bringing up a race worse than 
pagans. For let it be noted that the Japanese 
are higher in the scale than American youth. 
A pagan has some natural restraint left; but 
those who have thrown aside supernatural 
helps throw aside also all natural decency, and 
the ravages are greater than in those who 
knew no better. How long are we going 
to wait before we open our eyes to the 
necessity of religious education in schools? 
Only that can check this dreadful torrent 
of youthful depravity. — America, August 5, 
1911. 

[229] 



^SibntaHng in fstrsfctg 



29. Most Harlots Infected 

Men go smiling to their ruin. Few strum- 
pets are free from venereal diseases. If men 
refrained from haunting them, venereal dis- 
eases would soon disappear. 



30. Prostitution 

In response to a congratulatory message from 
the Social Purity Congress, held in Stockholm, 
Crispi, the late prime minister of Italy, said: 
"I abolished regulated prostitution, which is 
the well-spring of moral and physical ruin, 
in consequence of a lengthily matured per- 
suasion corroborated by the long experience 
and observation of enlightened minds. The 
license system is, in my opinion, an organiza- 
tion of lust." At that convention Professor 
Stuart, Dr. Nevins, and Attorney Percy 
Buntling discussed the means to fight pros- 
titution: a wide-awake association, the ac- 
knowledgment of married ladies' private 
property rights, an increase of salaries for 
girls and women, the education of women 
and of illegitimate children, and the obli- 

[230] 



(pp <$tat<tl fusil 



gation of men to support their natural 
offspring. 

One of the causes of the decadence of 
the Greeks and the Romans was that they 
gave themselves to idleness, greed, and car- 
nal pleasures, to the detriment of their 
intelligence and skill in industry and war- 
fare. 1 

31. Away with Dens! 

The very existence of brothels is a strong 
enticement to lewdness. It does not lessen 
the seduction of honorable women. For 
some the brothel is the first school of de- 
bauchery which they seek to practise else- 
where. Scores of individuals are infected 
before the disease becomes apparent 

Dr. Wernich says: " Brothels stimulate 
the curiosity of children and of the young 
of both sexes in a way dangerous to their 
morality." 

They promote white slavery. 

Public women are more quickly and more 
profoundly corrupted than isolated ones. Their 
return to an honorable life is far more difficult. 

2 St. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio in Politicam, L. VII. 
[231] 



JZbntaUng tv ^Jttrifcjt 



In Kolmar (Saxony), after the public houses 
were closed, sexual diseases effectually and 
lastingly disappeared. 

Miss Butler, after a fight of seventeen 
years (from 1869 to 1886), succeeded in get- 
ting the brothel system abolished in England. 
Thence resulted an abolitionist movement on 
the continent and in America, which, if not 
everywhere successful, obtained nevertheless 
important effects. The public health is not 
safeguarded by police control and medical 
inspection of the brothels, nor is it injured 
by the abolition of this legalized debauchery. 
On the contrary, where the brothels are sup- 
pressed, venereal diseases are gradually extir- 
pated. Police control is arbitrary; it deprives 
those women of their human dignity; ostracizes 
them from society, and hence increases the 
difficulty of their reform. 

Professor Pelmann of Bonn says: "The 
wide prevalence of syphilis is due to prosti- 
tution. Do away with it, and the disease 
will stop. Thus a greater service would be 
rendered to humanity than by extirpating 
cholera, as the ravages of syphilis are more 
extensive and more lasting, more dreadful in 

[232] 



Ufa* #*a«l £*a 



their consequences, and a greater menace to 
individuals and to the masses." 

Society to Blame 

The blame falls on society, which plunges 
women into such misery and retains them 
therein to glut unbridled lust. A popular 
reaction against this social vice cannot set 
in before public opinion will turn not only 
against the victim of prostitution, but against 
the authors of her shame and their extrava- 
gances. 

"If men would but consider the degrada- 
tion, misery, and hopelessness to which fallen 
women are doomed, they would keep as far 
away as from contagion and death. " Bishop 
J. L. Spalding, Glimpses of Truth, p. 186. 

32. Prostitution's Harm Uncontrolled 

One cause of the inadequacy of medical in- 
spection is that it is limited to the woman, 
absolutely respecting the man who is also a 
fountainhead of the disease and of its trans- 
mission. "In England, before the medical in- 
spection law (1867), there were 91 per thousand 
of syphilitics in the army and navy. In 1886, 

[233] 



fatmtbu} i& fnrity 



nineteen years after the enactment of the law, 
there were 110 per thousand; in 1892, six 
years after the repeal of the law, 79 per thou- 
sand. Among the civilians, from 1879 to 1882, 
10 per thousand were stricken; from 1885 
to 1889 only 8 per thousand/' — Bebel, The 
Woman. 

33. Harlotry's Ravages 

Not only is God offended and Heaven 
forfeited (Be not deceived: neither fornicators, 
nor adulterers, nor effeminate nor abusers of 
themselves with men shall inherit the kingdom 
of God. 1 Cor. vi, 9), but the whole moral 
being is fearfully damaged by it. God for- 
bids crime not only because it is offensive to 
Him, but also because it is injurious to man. 
Who past feeling have given themselves up to 
work all uncleanness with greediness. 

" I waive the quantum of the sin, 
The hazard of concealing, 
But oh! it hardens all within 
And petrifies the feeling." — Burns. 

Libertinage destroys all that is soft, deli- 
cate, and tender in the human heart. The 
sensualist soon becomes completely hard- 

[234] 



^artahe^m fintea^tst 



ened, indifferent to all that is good, pure, 
and true, lost to all that is beautiful in the 
world and worthy in humanity, bent entirely 
upon self-gratification. His very nature is 
utterly spoiled, and whether there be a gloss 
of polite manners over it or not, underneath 
the surface it is rotten and corrupt. Like- 
wise sooner or later the body suffers from 
indulgence in illicit intercourse. If the indi- 
vidual escape venereal disease, which very 
few do escape, or even if he be perfectly 
cured of it, still the life of lechery produces 
early decay. The powers of the body fail 
from the unnatural strain put upon them, 
the capacity for indulgence departs even 
while the pampered appetite is still living 
and craving, and a premature old age and a 
dishonored grave close the scene while chaste 
men of those years are yet almost in their 
prime. 

"If the gradual enfeeblement and final 
extinction of the power to think highly, to 
resolve nobly, and to love purely were the 
only curse a base life inflicts, it were none 
the less more to be dreaded and shunned 
than poverty, sickness, imprisonment, and 

[235] 



^bntalxn®, fc* ^nritQ 



the loss of good name and friends. To barter 
the life of the spirit for the pleasures of sense 
is to herd with brutes when one might enter 
the company of the wisest, the fairest, and 
the holiest." 1 " Happiness is pleasure of 
which one need never repent." 2 

34. Right Attitude Towards Prostitutes 

The pretext that " prostitutes are lost any- 
how" does not excuse men who seek them. 
Are not they also robbers who still further 
strip such as have been robbed by others? 
Thus they who degrade and abuse a woman 
cannot be excused through the plea that that 
woman is irretrievably wicked and degraded. 
That practice involves not only the woman 
but also the soul of the prevaricator; it 
shows his attitude toward womankind and 
encourages others to follow his example. His 
conciliating attitude toward it keeps up prosti- 
tution; his act affects the whole social life. 
He co-operates in the desecration of the human 
body and the human soul. Whereas, by 
mastering himself and resisting the tempta- 

1 Bishop J. L. Spalding, Glimpses of Truth, p. 18. 

2 Same book, p. 110. 

[236] 



tion, he gives good example to others; by 
abolishing prostitution in his own soul, he 
becomes a rock of salvation and preservation 
to many others, as man acts upon his fellows 
more by his character, his self-control, his aspi- 
rations and resolves, than by his outward deeds. 
He who never defiles himself with prosti- 
tutes does not save them, it is true; but he 
preserves other girls from turning such, and 
he keeps many other men from lusting after 
them, and from leading other girls into a life 
of shame. Whoso curbs himself, curbs others; 
whereas they who yield help others to throw 
off restraint. Every youth who remains pure 
becomes a savior some time . and some way. 
He reaches a strong arm to many who else 
would fall; and, without his knowing or sus- 
pecting it, a bracing influence goes forth 
from his eyes, his voice and his words, an 
influence which arouses the firm faith that 
there is something higher in life than grab- 
bing and enjoying. There is an invisible 
order of saviors in the world. Blessed indeed 
are they, if, despite their strength, they per- 
severe in modesty and humility. 

[237] 



y&hncaling tn ^nxiln 



35. Remorse and Grief after Sin 

"And yet I was very much moved at this 
my first fall. I remember how straightway 
in that very room a deep sadness overwhelmed 
me, and tears welled to my eyes, as I thought 
of the loss of my innocence, of the eternal loss 
of my normal relations with woman. Yes, my 
relations with women were forever doomed. 
Impossible from that hour to have pure con- 
verse with a woman. I felt like a lost man. 
To be a lost man is to be like a man who 
has fallen into a physical state akin to that of 
the slave of opium or alcohol. As the latter 
lives no longer a normal life, thus a man who 
has sinned with several women is no more a 
normal man; he is undone and lost. As the 
opium fiend and the drunkard are betrayed 
by their bearing, thus the lost man is recog- 
nized. This man may try to master himself, 
to fight his passions; but pure, simple, and 
brotherly intercourse with women is forever 
barred to him. His very glance upon a 
maiden betrays him. 

"I was a lost man, and such I remain.'' 
The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoi. 

[238] 



"The most complete disappointment, the 
most bitter disillusion befalls those who seek 
the good of life in the indulgence of appetite 
and lust. They are like the insane who know 
their insanity and feel that it is immedicable." 

"The memory of our purest and noblest 
joys remains with us like a fountain of per- 
petual youth, while that of the wrong we 
have done is the only pain which follows us 
with unrelenting persistence. " * 

36. Preventing Prostitution 

And now a word as to how it may be 
possible to strike at the root of prostitution, 
by preventing the woman from becoming a 
prostitute and the young man from becoming 
infected by illegitimate intercourse. Let us, 
as physicians, jurists, and sociologists, ac- 
knowledge that at the bottom of it all is our 
present social fabric. Prostitution gets its 
recruits to no small extent from the unfor- 
tunate girl who has loved, not wisely, but too 
well. Her own sister will stamp her as an 
outcast, and her child as a bastard. A little 

bishop Spalding, Glimpses of Truth, p. 186, and Things of 
the Mind, p. 56. 

[239] 



^hntalittg tn ^jJuritji 



more humanity, a little more sisterly love, a 
little more compassion, is needed here. Let 
woman be more womanly toward her sister 
who may have fallen, but nine times out of 
ten through no fault of her own. A helping 
hand stretched out to the unfortunate child- 
mother will often prevent her from becoming 
a prostitute. 

A few more homes, where the unfortunate 
girl, who has become a prospective mother, 
may be received several months before her 
confinement and kindly cared for till all Is 
over; a few more homes, where the unfortu- 
nate woman of the street may be received, 
and another chance be given her, and prosti- 
tution is bound to diminish. 

The underpaid factory or shop girl is an- 
other frequent recruit for prostitution, often 
by reason of necessity for her daily wants, 
and sometimes by her desire for finery. Let 
all philanthropists among the manufacturers 
and large storekeepers, while still at the 
head of their enterprises, remember this. It 
is a greater philanthropy to pay the girls in 
their employ living wages, so that the temp- 
tation to go wrong will be removed, than to 

[240] 



leave millions in their last will and testament 
to cathedrals, hospitals, and similar charities. 

Better wages for our young men, and more 
model tenement houses, with reasonable rents, 
will encourage many young men to enter the 
matrimonial state and rear a family. It must 
be obvious to all of us, that early and happy 
marriages are the best means to combat pros- 
titution and venereal disease. I think it is 
absolutely wrong for fear of indelicacy to 
keep the masses in ignorance concerning these 
vital matters. 

37. Injustice of the Double Standard 

Dr. Mobius, of Leipsic, in " Vermischte Auf- 
satze" (1898), says: "All right-minded people 
long to see our codes revised. They who 
steal a few potatoes or some pieces of wood 
are imprisoned; whoso smokes a cigar where 
it may start a fire is punished; but he who 
infects his neighbor with the most horrible 
diseases, either through wantonness or wicked- 
ness, goes scot-free. Before giving a daugh- 
ter in marriage, the father ought to demand 
from the young man a sworn statement that 
he is free from venereal disease." 

[241] 



%bvttaUtt£ hi ^jJitril^i 



Teach the boy Tolstoi's theory anent forni- 
cation. Say to him: "Thou art obliged to 
recognize, as wife, the girl with whom thou 
hast the first sexual commerce; she has the 
first right, the only right of nature, to become 
thy wife; as thou intendest to demand of the 
woman who is to be thy future wife that she 
be a chaste woman, a virgin, she has an equal 
right to exact the same of thee." 1 

"Is this not a swindle of which society as 
a whole makes itself guilty: keeping the vir- 
gins in ignorance (of men's doings) until 
after marriage? Of this tacit understanding 
among men, aiming at covering up their vice, 
a great many mothers become accomplices. 
... If I engage a servant, it is well understood 
that, according to a ruling of civil law, he 
shall be fully instructed as to his duties, and 
the contract is null and void if I wilfully 
deceive him with regard to his future posi- 
tion. But where there is question of the 
most important and the most sacred contract 
of all, one which binds for life, there, one 
party is to remain in absolute ignorance if 
the other party proffer the necessary guaran- 

1 Manner Treue, by John Keidel. 
[242] 



tees for a happy issue of the union. Here 
one party shall have all the rights, the other 
one only duties and blind faith' ' l 

Bjornson sounded the alarm concerning the 
long-tolerated outrage of a double standard of 
morality for men and women by his play, 
"The Glove/ ' It acted like a mine, which 
shot into the glaring daylight centuries of 
injustice towards the weaker sex. Why mon- 
ogamy for the latter and polygamy for the 
former? "Nothing awakens the conscience 
like knowledge" (Bjornson). 

See what is said about the mothers' special 
fitness to teach their sons, page 179, and 
about the higher motives to lead chaste lives, 
page 51. 

38. Restraining Thoughts 

Upon meeting persons of the fair sex young 
men ought to think: "My mother was such." 

"Look upon every enemy as though some 
day he were to be thy companion; and on 
every girl as though she were some day to 
kneel at your side before the altar." 

2 Dr. R. Heim of the Univ. of Zurich. 
[243] 



^&bntalin£ ta ^Jttrii$* 



"The uncorrupted youth honors in every 
girl the mysterious vessel of human beings/ J 

The thought of his future betrothed and 
bride and of his duties towards her must prove 
a protecting angel to the youth. How shall he 
who has first contaminated and debased him- 
self aspire to a virtuous and honest wife? 
Can he draw nigh to her without remorse? 

39. Fear of Infection Effectual only as a 
Help to Religious Restraint 

"Fear may hold a man back for a while; 
but, at the same time, if it is not reduced 
merely to an auxiliary force in the battle, it 
will bring about a degeneration, a weakness, a 
relaxation which will soon sap the strongest 
energies. Religion erects chastity into a vir- 
tue, instead of dragging it down to a hygienic 
precaution; religion lifts up above the danger 
rather than simply guarding against it. The 
morality inculcated by the Church imbues the 
mind and the heart with the horror of sin, 
whereas lay morality can but strike and im- 
press the preservation instinct with a tragic 
frame of chastisements." — F. Veuillot in 
U Univers. 

[244] 



^iltgiast* ^t^ttaini 



Appeal to high and noble ideals, to 
faith, to the sacredness of a vow, to the 
human dignity and honor; escaping disease 
is the lowest motive and cannot free from 
remorse. 

Pinard: The teaching of morality and re- 
ligion contribute most efficaciously to this 
prophylaxis, i.e., are the best safeguard. 

Harnack says: " Religion is the soul of 
morality, and morality is the body of re- 
ligion.' ' The Church reminds youths of St. 
Paul's: " Respect your bodies which are the 
temples of God. She puts before them 
thousands of altars where flows Blood more 
eloquent than Abel's prayer," 

As God gives Himself really and substan- 
tially to us, His Flesh becomes our flesh and 
His Blood our blood, so that it is no longer 
man that lives, but God that lives in him. 
How beautiful in this connection are the words 
of Cardinal Newman: "The Church boasts 
that she can keep the young hearts pure, as 
she gives us Jesus for our food and Mary for 
our nursing mother." 



[245] 



|£jtor jtBtt£ in ^p«rit|| 



40. The Father Lives on in the Son 

Parents who complain of their son's aberra- 
tions have only themselves to blame. "I 
justly thank thee, God, our Protector and 
Preserver, for having granted me to see my 
hoary old age bloom again in thy youth, my 
son. When He who directs and rules all 
things will please, I shall leave this human 
dwelling, but I shall not die altogether, when 
passing from one place to another, as in thee 
and for thee I live with my visible likeness, 
and then I shall continually be on earth, com- 
muning with and seeing men of honor and 
my friends, as I was wont." This passage 
of Rabelais is, as Guizot observes, one of the 
noblest motives which can be set before a 
young man to urge him to distinguish him- 
self, to lead a pure life, and to honor his 
father's image, which he is destined to per- 
petuate. Such advice is bound to inspire a 
son with gratitude and ardor when the father 
adds: "It is not because I mistrust your vir- 
tue that I speak thus, as you have proved 
your solid character ere this, but to encourage 
you evermore to grow better and better. And 

[246] 



I thus write you to-day not so much to ex- 
hort you to live right, as to make you rejoice 
for having thus lived, and to strengthen you 
in your good resolutions." l 



41. Reciprocal Influence of Mind and Body 

How greatly man's animal life depends 
on the strength, cheerfulness, and freedom of 
the spiritual life is proved by the fact that a 
great many men quickly decline and become 
subject to numerous infirmities as soon as 
they leave off mental activity and settle 
down to rest. On the other hand, what 
restoring influence, longing and determina- 
tion exercise upon the sick is illustrated, e.g., 
by the case of Dr. John Henry Newman. 
When struck down by fever in Sicily, in 1833, 
he at once rallied when he began and kept on 
saying: "I shall not die, for I have work to 
do in England." 2 On the contrary, as every- 
body knows, when those critically ill give 
up, the doctors are powerless. Thus when 
through sensual indulgence man foregoes the 

1 Meditations et Etudes Morales, by Guizot. 

2 Cardinal Newman, by Wm. Barry, D.D. 

[247] 



Z&ntaiing la ^nxxh^ 



nobler aims of life, he declines even physic- 
ally. He, who, for the sake of low pleasure, 
injures and misuses another's life, lacks deeper 
power and cheerfulness to labor for higher 
and unselfish ends; he no longer feels entitled 
to the nobler things of life, as he realizes the 
contradiction between his own life and the 
ideals which inspire high endeavors. 

42. Uplifting Effects of Ideals and of 
Continence 

The youth who is about to surrender him- 
self to debauchery should forthwith be rescued 
from the ruinous step when, as with Dr. New- 
man, quoted above, the thought flashes upon 
him: "I also have a work to do. God 
calls me to be the stay and the consort of 
that sweet pure maiden, and to co-operate 
with the Creator in raising a progeny of boys 
and girls. Would I want to see my mother 
or wife or son or daughter in such degrada- 
tion? Am I free from responsibility to God 
for helping to keep another's daughter or sis- 
ter in that ignominious bondage? No! I'll 
lend my aid to raise her, if possible, but not 
to keep her in thraldom/ ' 

[248] 



Indulgence Pulls Down; Restraint Upbuilds 

Every yielding to and indulgence in the 
lower instincts is primarily fatal to health. 
And, on the other hand, whatever aids self- 
mastery and intensifies brain energy proves 
in the long run genuinely wholesome for man, 
as, unlike the brute's, man's animal life is 
most intimately attuned to his brain activity. 
Abundant proof of this fact is supplied by 
the latest phase of medical science, psycho- 
therapy (the cure and the alleviation of nerv- 
ous troubles by mental and moral stimulation) . 
The successes of this healing method daily 
demonstrate in a really astounding way what 
fundamentally hygienic factors are a firm 
character, a strong will, and a rigid self-dis- 
cipline. To sacrifice these to lower nature 
is downright folly. With right did August 
Comte stigmatize as horse-doctors those 
physicians who minister to the animal in man, 
disregarding the mental status. 

It is the universal experience of all high- 
minded men — to which Goethe also witnesses 
— that sexual continence exercises a mysteri- 
ous and extraordinary influence on the in- 

[249] 



^£bntattn$ iff TjjinxitQ 



tensity and elasticity of all our spiritual 
functions. Thus Schiller's Don Carlos speaks 
of those who wasted their best half of the 
mind — manhood's force — in revelry. 

43. Purity Sustains and Promotes the 
Health of the Soul 

Regardless of physiology or hygiene, as 
health is not man's highest object of life, 
continence is demanded by man's conscience. 
Remorse and moral depression due to sinful 
indulgence cripple man physically and shatter 
his nervous system. They who sin against 
their spiritual nature shall be punished harder 
by the laws of life than such as trespass 
against the physical nature. Our spiritual 
nature is not a luxury in our domestic econ- 
omy; our deepest bonds of social life are 
enrooted in it; it stands for our most personal 
life-objects — the last motive of all our striv- 
ing and toiling; without it, our physical 
existence loses all its sense and worth. Man 
cannot enjoy life, if his life is objectless and 
worthless; this consciousness of the high 
value of our life invests it with its energy and 
elasticity. 

[250] 



TjftatUfai ^tlsgsatt 



44. Practical Religion Helpful to Chastity 

"When youths begin life, enter universities, 
stores or shops, they need more than ever 
advice, affection, encouragement and enlight- 
ened guidance to save them from being 
carried off by the maelstrom of evil in which 
so many young men lose their strength, their 
energy, and their honor. 

"In religious associations young men find 
capable direction, food for their activity, 
decent and safe friendships, healthful recrea- 
tion (plenty of fun). 'A brother who is 
helped by a brother is like a strong city.'" — 
Wisdom, xviii, 19. 

"Don't combat doubts by arguments, but 
by works.' ' — Bossuet. 

"Combat egotism, which begets lust, 
through social activity." 

"Youths must fight evil inclinations by 
practical works of charity." 

"The selfish man is an anti-social being; 
whoever does not love his neighbor, does not 
witness physical and moral sufferings of his 
brethren, ends by not loving any one but him- 
self, and that the most abject part of his be- 

[251] 



9S 



^Eibntttting l& fnxity 



ing, his flesh. Youths must put their chastity 
under the safeguard of charity. Enter reso- 
lutely in contact with wretchedness. Be gen- 
erous, be devoted, be charitable, be human, 
and you shall be pure. Young men must amuse 
themselves. Away with that false maxim 
which is the fruit of ignorance and vice. It is 
as wrong for youths as for maidens to shake 
off the yoke of God and of their parents. 
Both sexes are bound by the same laws." 

In 1831 Mozart, then twenty-five years old, 
wrote to a friend: " Nature clamors loud in 
me, and perhaps stronger than in a coarse and 
ignorant villain; still, I may not pattern my 
life on that of many youths around me. To 
do so, on the one hand, I have too religious a 
mind; I am too honest and I love my neighbor 
too much to purpose deceiving some poor 
girl. On the other hand, I prize my health 
too much to jeopardize it by common com- 
merce. So I can swear before God that up 
to this day I have not a single fall to reproach 
myself with." 

Some young men give themselves up to un- 
bridled licentiousness. Will this make them 
better husbands? You might as well say that 

[252] 



the brain is active and vigorous only after the 
violent inflammation of meningitis. 

Says Bettazzi: "The appetites for some 
things are too easily confounded with true 
needs. We are indeed inclined to things 
harmful and illicit, as the Bible says, but we 
refrain from them just as a judicious mother 
keeps her children from eating or drinking 
poison, despite the child's / want that" 

45. Rules for Courtship 

"A young woman, whilst in the company of 
a young man, should not allow him to become 
too familiar, for it is easy to proceed from 
what is innocent to what is sinful, once the 
barrier of reserve has been removed. Her 
safety lies in curbing the first advances. 
This rule is of great importance to you. 
Check the first attempt of what is immodest, 
and you will not be troubled again. If in- 
deed after this reproof the young man should 
repeat the offense, leave the room, and refuse 
to receive him again. He is not a fit com- 
panion for you. 

"A young woman should always have respect 
for herself, and claim the same from those 

[253] 



^hittaling l& ^ssrtfcg 



around her. Do not expose yourself to dan- 
ger; 1 never place yourself in such a position 
that, if an enemy saw you, he could say any- 
thing detrimental to your character. 

"In well-regulated families, it is the custom, 
when a young man has been calling on the 
daughter regularly for two or three months, 
for the father to ask him what are his inten- 
tions — whether they are honorable and with 
a view to matrimony. 

"Long company-keeping and long engage- 
ments are fruitful sources of many sins. Do 
not keep company until a late hour of the 
night. 

"Do not expose yourself to danger by going 
into lonesome places. 

"Remember, that being engaged is no excuse 
for what is improper. Do not keep the com- 
pany of a bad young man," 2 

How foolish would that person be, who, 
owning a precious jewel, would barter it for 

l E.g., by being alone with a lover after balls, theatrical 
plays, or out buggy-riding. The safe rule is to keep company 
only in the presence of a parent or some older person. 

2 Crumbs of Comfort, by Rev. Xavier Sutton. (H. L. 
Kilner & Co., of Philadelphia.) 

[254] 



a mere trifle, because a smooth talker depre- 
ciates it to her. She could easily have in- 
formed herself about its true value. Alas! 
it is too late when she realizes that she has 
made the fool's bargain. 1 

Excellent advice on this subject is to be 
found in Father Alfred Martin's pamphlet 
Carta, also in Father Lasance's prayer-books 
for boys and girls, 2 and in the little book 
called " Angelical Virtue/ y 

46. Modesty: Examples 

Regarding the excellent rule for girls Noli 
Me Tangere — Touch Me Not — we may re- 
call how both St. Peter of Alcantara and St. 
Alphonsus Liguori manifested the greatest 
anxiety lest a brother should touch their 
bodies, even in their last illness. The same 
scrupulous reserve was most noticeable with 
the virgin of Lucca, Gemma Galgani. De- 
spite her extreme weakness, she managed to 
get a towel and a basin of water and to wash 

x " Jesus, Brautigam reiner Seelen," Lehr- und Gebeibuch 
fur Jungfrauen, by Dr. J. A. Keller, Minister. 

2 The Young Man's Guide and the Girls' Guide (Benziger 
Bros.). 

[255] 



Jzhncaling tu ^ttriig 



her feet herself, before the priest gave her 
Extreme Unction. 

(See Roman Breviary, October 19, Lessons 
V and VI, Vita di San Alfonso, by Cardinal 
Capecelatro, and Vita di Gemma Galgani, by 
Padre Stanislao. C. P., 1910. This famous 
stigmatisee died in 1903.) 

47. A Good Woman's Salutary Influence 
on Man 

A true youthful love may be quite salutary, 
but only if controlled by sacred silence, and 
when it is neither an anticipation nor a play. 
What Beatrice was for Dante, a sweet and 
pure girl can become for the soul of every 
serious-minded youth, a power for recollection 
and moral freedom — the transient a type 
of the perpetual, earthly beauty a summons 
to everything perfect, where the earthly 
rises above the earth, and becomes a figure 
of things eternal. 

A regularly recurring fact in the coloniza- 
tion of the wild West is that one pure woman 
of sterling character kept a whole mob-like 
crowd of miners in order. Woman's quiet 
and mature soul acts like a soul-stirring appeal 

[256] 



infni (fytmxtittg 



to the remnant of respect for the high powers 
of life. 

Woman should be mindful of her educating 
influence over man, that she may not swerve 
from the right path in her own education. 
Pestalozzi wanted girls to be educated to in- 
terior quiet. In his Iphigenia Goethe illus- 
trates the power of the holy quiet of woman 
as contrasted with man's nervous, violent, and 
therefore destructive activity. 

It cannot be too strongly impressed on 
woman that it is by her quiet and her perfect 
self-control that she is to counteract man's 
steaming energy. 

48. Sinful Courting 

Organic virginity may be left, but who will 
tell me what is left in the soul by ardors 
repressed or deviated by incomplete caresses? 
Who will tell me how that heart is worn out 
and extinguished, which is accustomed to 
solicit passion, and to suppress it as soon as 
enkindled? For one American woman, who, 
after having flirted several years, really loves 
and marries her lover, there are ten who, at 
twenty years, have broken the strings of ten- 

[257] 



^hntaling ta T^ktHq 



derness, contracted marriages of money, or 
made a vulgar bargain, without experiencing 
the joys of a veritable love. Unfortunately, 
many consider an engagement a genteel 
method of legalizing improper relations with 
some favorite one of the opposite sex, rather 
than a genuine betrothal. 

Too often a girl is engaged to be married 
many times before the right one is secured, 
and the young heart is used up before it 
should dream of love. 

It is the pernicious custom to accord to 
lovers all the rights of solitude and retirement 
that they could reasonably expect if the mar- 
riage ceremony had actually transpired. But 
for a private bedroom, they have nearly all 
the privileges, and are as secluded, whenever 
they may choose to be so, as any married 
couple could wish . . . to the detriment of 
their physical, and the utter ruin of their 
moral, health. 

49. Consequences of Early Illegitimate Sexual 
Intercourse 

The youth's accent becomes coarse, his 
face savage, his character less noble, and his 

[258] 



rt®&t &( JLttlpZQ 



habits debased. He lacks the full joy of life, 
he becomes nervous, inconstant, unsettled, 
slack, and devoid of character. All these 
evils cling to him even to old age. Nota- 
bly so if he became infected by syphilis or 
gonorrhea. 

In an appeal to young men, issued by 
twenty professors of German, Austrian, and 
Swiss universities, are these words: " Abstain 
from sexual relations, else you jeopardize your 
health, debase your character, your thoughts, 
and your sentiments. Be therefore on your 
guard and resist the temptations." Fifty-six 
American physicians corroborate the state- 
ments of their European colleagues and 
agree with them that sexual continence never 
caused any illness nor hurt the health of any 
normal individuals. 

50. Havoc of Lechery in Youths 

In such as surrender themselves to lust, 
purity, faith, religion, love and respect are 
dead, but that power at least which makes 
a man of a child, which is the glorious sign 
of manhood, shall be left him, namely, will- 
power. Alas! it also is utterly ruined. The 

[259] 



^Ebntating in T^nxttQ 



youth, who has the misfortune of suffering 
that tyranny of the senses, is both humiliated 
and enervated; he loses his rectitude, his 
liberty, his will and his manly honor. Every 
victory which vice gains over him robs him 
of a portion of his strength; the habit of dis- 
comfiture takes from him even the desire of 
overcoming and the very thought of making 
an effort; the day comes when he can say of 
himself: "Ask nothing of me because I can 
do nothing save what passion dictates. It 
absolutely tyrannizes my will and my 
strength.' ' 

" What shall become then of those faculties 
which are man's natural adornments and the 
crown of his beauty? What of his imagination, 
his memory, his intellect, his very character? 
His memory weakens as the evil completes 
its devastation: it becomes dull, languid and 
powerless. To arouse it, energy is neces- 
sary, and he has no energy left. To increase 
it, labor is required, and he has a horror 
of making the least effort. His imagination, 
which should be the thought-producer, the 
well-spring of his speech and the movement 
of his life, he condemns it to the complicity 

[260] 



atmr &f ^tttyrQ 



of his shame! That imagination which had 
wings to soar to the unseen, he pulls it down 
to drag it in the mire. His very intellect, that 
faculty which breathes truth, as lungs the air, 
which ascends heavenward as the plant 
rises to the sun, shall be forced into con- 
spiracy with his senses against the will which 
it was bound to uplift and direct to the heights 
of the mind, and soon by dint of touching 
matter, of wallowing in matter, it shall con- 
found itself with matter. At last, that which 
is the reflex and the splendor of man's moral 
life, that which betokens power and reveals 
a strong personality, his character, gradually 
wanes and vanishes. As fast as the moral 
life dies in him, he gradually loses his char- 
acter; the manly majesty falls from his dis- 
honored brow, and in the stead of this blasted 
aureole shall appear what the Apocalypse 
calls the mark of the beast.' ' l 

"What has become of education, of all 
those fine results which marriage was to 
gather and lay by in security? Where is the 
vigor of the members, the soundness of the 

l Mon Crime — Discours de College, by Father Emanuel 
Barbier (Poussielge, Paris). 

[261] 



^E&tsraBttg la T^utxIq 



mind, the generosity of feeling, the straight- 
forwardness of the will; where, at last, is that 
health, that strength, that ardor of body and 
soul which are the endowments of the well- 
educated man? Everything is spent and 
hopelessly gone. Marriage, instead of find- 
ing virtue and honor which it was to exalt, 
meets vice and corruption it is powerless to 
heal." Education, by M. Chauvet, Professor 
of Philosophy at Rennes. 

Let families bear in mind that education to 
be complete and perfect, and to bear all its 
flowers and fruits in this life, must be finished 
and crowned by marriage. 

51. Self 'Abuse. — Symptoms 

"Dry cough, oppression, panting, fatigue at 
the least exertion; obscured visions, tremu- 
lousness, palpitation of the heart, painful 
cramps, convulsive movements like epilepsy. 
Pains in the limbs or at the back of the head, 
in the spine, breast, or stomach. Great weak- 
ness in the back, sometimes lethargy or ex- 
cessive drowsiness; at other times slow, hectic, 
consumptive fever. Digestive derangements, 

nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite or pro- 

[262] 



jfcl£~^Mmx* 



gressive emaciation. The countenance is pale, 
sunken, flabby, often leaden, with a dark 
circle around the sunken eyes, which are dull, 
lowered or averted. A sad, shameful, spirit- 
less physiognomy; the voice is feeble and 
hoarse. Sometimes the body is bent and 
often there are all the appearances of pul- 
monary consumption or the characteristics 
of decrepitude, joined to the habits and 
pretensions of youth. The most constant 
and invariable early signs are the downcast, 
averted glance and a disposition to sol- 
itude. 

Says Dr. Gottlieb Vogel: "The mastur- 
bator gradually loses his moral faculties; he 
acquires a dull, silly, listless, embarrassed, sad, 
effeminate exterior. He becomes indolent, 
averse to and incapable of all intellectual 
exertion; all presence of mind deserts him; he 
is discontented, troubled, restless when in 
company; he is taken by surprise, and 
even alarmed if required simply to reply to 
a child's question. His feeble soul succumbs 
to the lightest task. His memory and mind 
are weakened; fear and even despair overtake 
him." 

[263] 



^bntt&xn^ in y*«rifcg 



" Nature's penalties are inexorable though 
not always swift. 

" A young masturbator narrates that all of 
his twelve or fifteen companion onanists died 
early in frightful torments. At eighteen years 
he was afflicted with frequent nightly pollu- 
tions which occurred in spite of himself. 'I 
can never sleep soundly, and the whole day 
I am sad/ 

" Another youth at the age of seventeen, 
when indulging in this vile practice, became 
slightly unconscious. He suffered a convuls- 
ive movement of the extensor muscles of the 
head, which was forcibly thrown back, while 
the neck became much swollen. He had 
occasional spasms; seminal emissions became 
habitual and involuntary. He was afflicted 
with paroxysms of never less than eight 
hours, and sometimes of fifteen. He had 
violent pains in the back of the head, which 
made him not cry, but howl. He could not 
swallow either liquids or solids; his voice was 
hoarse, and in consequence of complete loss 
of strength he had to quit work." Dr. Cooke. 

The best authorities agree that masturba- 
tion injures mental capacity by weakening 

[264] 



jfci£~£UttMF* 



memory and depressing intellectual energy 
and aggravates all hereditary troubles, thus 
causing neurasthenia (poverty of nerve force), 
hypochondria, hysteria, psychosis (mind dis- 
ease). 1 

" Female self-abuse causes an increase of the 
proper secretions of the sexual organs. These 
excessive secretions, due to habitual irritation, 
are extremely debilitating. The common 
trouble popularly called l whites ' (leucor- 
rhceal discharges) in fifteen or eighteen of 
twenty cases result from masturbation; be- 
sides, these manipulations bring about chronic 
inflammations of the vagina and of the 
womb. 

" Those who seek pleasure through self- 
abuse punish themselves for life. They never 
attain old age; most frequently they fall vic- 
tims to some grave chronic disease, the germs 
of which they owe to this detestable vice. 
The reformed onanist is the earliest and surest 
prey of severe epidemics by reason of his bad 
antecedents and deteriorated condition of his 
constitution.' ' Dr. Cooke. 

Dr. H. Fournier, one of the most eminent 

x Dr. Havelock Ellis in Psychology of Sex. 
[265] 



^jtorotmg in T^nxttQ 



physicians of Paris, says: " There is not a 
vice more fatal to the conservation of man 
than masturbation" Rev. Coppen's Moral 
Principles, p. 115. 

Self-abuse causes the waste of a vital sub- 
stance, a fluid which, when not uselessly 
spent, re-enters the blood, at least in part, to 
give it fire and energy. 

But very soon this waste takes place, not 
only directly, but indirectly. Emissions oc- 
cur frequently of a night without any manip- 
ulation. By and by they take place day and 
night involuntarily, without handling and 
without pleasure. There is thus set up a 

REGULAR DRAIN OF SEMINAL MATTER WHICH 
RAPIDLY BRINGS ON EXHAUSTION. This ex- 

haustion will often induce or promote con- 
sumption, and even in the strongest frames 

it Will END IN NERVOUS AND MUSCULAR DEBIL- 
ITY, with a long train of real and imaginary 
pains and evils, and while injuring the body, 
this vice has an equally baneful influence on 
the mind. The imagination becomes polluted, 
the thoughts defiled, the dreams impure, the 
will weakened, and the whole intellectual 
and moral life revolves in uncleanness. In 

[266] 



the course of a short time the subject of 
this wretched habit is unwell in body and 
unwell in mind, without ambition, without 
energy, and without courage, thoroughly 
demoralized, fit for nothing. 

If unhappily you have been overcome by 
this youthful lust, you must by all means 
give it up. No half-measures with it. The 
drunkard cannot reform by becoming a mod- 
erate drinker. Nor can the poor victims of 
this vice get the better of it by limiting them- 
selves to occasional indulgence. They must 
stop it altogether by a mighty and continued 
effort, though this effort be painful as cutting 
off the right hand or plucking out an eye. 
And if thy hand or thy foot scandalize thee 
(cause thee to sin), cut it off and cast it from 
thee. Matt, xviii, 8. 

Beware then, boys and girls, of self-abuse, 
as the foregoing statements show what such 
a habit may lead to. By doing the vile act 
repeatedly, the habit is easily acquired. 

52. Prevention 

Says Dr. William Lee Howard in Start Your 
Child Right: " If you tell your son some essen- 

[267] 



%bntatin$ h* f ttrsigr 



tial truths about this vital seminal fluid, you 
will have a happy boy and later on a mental 
and physical man to be proud of. The facts 
to tell him are: That the great force of life 
is this vital fluid. That a boy who wants to 
be a successful football player, baseball cham- 
pion, or win out in any form of hard athletics, 
must depend upon keeping this fluid in his 
system. That it is the force back of all 
winners. It is also the power that sustains 
brain workers. Let him understand that in 
all probability the force which makes this 
seminal fluid in all workers, muscular or brain, 
is absorbed into the tissues and gives them 
power. He will know that athletes in train- 
ing are obliged to abstain from sexual thoughts 
as well as from liquor and tobacco. It is 
because trainers know the fact — but not 
always the reason — that not an atom of 
seminal force must be used up in any way 
but through the muscles. The reason, tell 
him, that the Roman gladiators slept on hard 
boards, was not to toughen themselves, but 
because by sleeping this way there would be 
no ' night dreams.' " 



[268] 



Cleanliness 

Many a girl is started on a career of in- 
validism from the want of thorough cleanli- 
ness. From babyhood up the girl's external 
organs should be washed daily with a soft 
sponge or cloth. 

The habit of self-abuse in little girls gener- 
ally grows out of the fact that these organs 
are kept irritated by the accumulation of 
material just under and between the lips of 
the external sex parts. 

The gland of the baby boy's sex organ must 
likewise be washed and the covering thereof 
must be pulled back. When this cannot be 
done easily, circumcision is very valuable and 
may be necessary. 

When children are large enough to attend 
to this washing themselves, they will do this 
with the same unconcern as they wash the 
other parts. By thus removing a source of 
itching and irritation, one of the causes of 
self-abuse is done away with. 

Accumulation of fetid material in the lower 
bowels also produces much irritation in the 
adjoining parts. To prevent this the child 

[269] 



^hntaiitt^ l& ^uxttQ 



should drink a glassful of water before break- 
fast every morning. Don't forget the fact 
that American girls and women do not drink 
enough water. 

When secretions are not washed away, they 
become partly absorbed by the delicate mem- 
branes, from which result headaches, discom- 
fort, irritation at the slightest annoyance, 
disobedience, wilfulness, and lack of attention 
to studies or advice. After each menstrual 
period the external parts should be washed 
with warm water and pure (castile) soap. 

Most girls who are free from organic 
troubles can derive benefits from cold baths 
by commencing in the summer and keeping 
them up through the winter. Cold baths, 
however, should always be avoided during 
the menstrual period. 

Cold baths will keep the skin fresh, harden 
the flesh, keep down superfluous fat, and also 
put on fat on the too thin girl. 

These cold baths also promote the flow of 
blood to the internal organs, a very necessary 
item for the health of women. 1 

1 These remarks on Cleanliness are also borrowed from 
Dr. Howard's Start Your Child Right. 

[270] 



(Curt u£ £tlt~!kbnmt 



Cure of Solitary Vice 
A teacher told Bjornson: "I rooted out 
masturbation from this school by private 
confidential talks followed by public instruc- 
tion. As a result of this the children 

WATCH EACH OTHER; NO CONTROL PROVES SO 
RIGOROUS AND EFFICIENT A RESTRAINT AS 
THIS MUTUAL SUPERVISION/' 

The first step towards a cure is the firm 
resolution to quit the practice. This firm re- 
solve, being essential to the validity of the 
sacrament, is always required and insisted on at 
confession, and it is there strengthened 
by grace. 

Hence the Sacrament of Penance is both a 
curative of vice and a preventive. Philip 
Neri succeeded in nerving a youth to discon- 
tinue self-abuse by having him go to confes- 
sion daily for some weeks. Besides, Holy 
Communion is the great spiritual tonic. Also, 
invoking the Blessed Virgin will prove most 
helpful to banish impure thoughts and over- 
come the temptation to sin. 

53. Early Marriages 
The cows and horses of Norway have 
become small and of inferior quality because 

[271] 



%hnfatin$ hi ^urii^ 



of early breeding. Men of nineteen are often 
incapable of military service, and their en- 
listment is retarded one or two years. The 
foregoing facts prove that before twenty or 
twenty-two man should not use his sexual 
organs. Hence, according to Dr. Kornig, 
the proper age for marriage is twenty-five for 
men and twenty-one for women. From fully 
developed and robust parents only spring 
healthy and robust children. 

While Dr. Kornig' s age theory is physio- 
logically correct, earlier marriages often prove 
better morally and physically. " Better to 
marry than to burn/' says St. Paul. 

Some doctors nowadays disapprove of early 
marriages as an evil. Yet to them Lecky, in 
his History of European Morals, traces the 
matchless purity of both the Irish maidens 
and priests. 

During the Middle Ages a man had to 
prove his virtue to his lady-love by some 
deed of heroism; and just as Jacob served 
seven years for Rachel (and they seemed but 
a few days because of the greatness of his 
love) (Gen. xxix, 20), so the medieval knight 
by many years of fearless and irreproachable 
life proved himself worthy of his sweetheart. 

[272] 



Why shall not our girls require that their 
suitors show themselves masters of their ani- 
mal instincts? And to the objection of some 
youths: "If only we could marry young as 
of old, it would be easy to keep pure," Fr. 
W. Foester answers: " They who speak so are 
not men at all; they are unfit for marriage. 
If they lack will-power to subdue passion 
before wedlock, how will they be strong 
enough to resist temptation after it?" l 

54. The Supreme Remedy. Paramount Duty 
of Catholic Parents 

Had priests as many tongues as there are 
leaves in the forest, with those myriad tongues 
they should thunder into the parents' ears 
their obligation to seize the opportunity of 
complying with the Holy Father's wishes 
regarding frequent and daily Communion for 
the sake of their children's spiritual welfare. 
The young are beset nowadays with many 
more pitfalls than their parents were forty 
or fifty years ago. Half a century of god- 
less education has produced an immense crop 
of evils; temptations have multiplied and the 

^Lebensjuhrung, pp. 201 and 202. 
[273] 



^hnt&lxng Iff Ijfinrili* 



very atmosphere is overcharged with im- 
morality. Catholic parents who shut their 
eyes to the snares set their boys and girls 
are indeed the blind leading the blind. Should 
they detect symptoms of smallpox or scarlet 
fever in their offspring, how quickly would 
they call in medical aid. Thousands of boys 
and girls are stricken with moral smallpox 
and moral consumption, and their parents 
carelessly suffer them to become physical as 
well as spiritual wrecks, rather than take the 
trouble of bringing them regularly to their 
soul-physician and to the Divine Healer and 
Fount of life and strength. 

55. Purity Heightens and Ennobles Lawful 
Pleasures 

In answer to the question, What is purity? 
a philosopher said: "It is that which keeps up 
a refined sexual taste." They who live conti- 
nently are not enemies of the natural life, but 
they are averse to becoming common and 
vulgar. They are not opposed to sensual 
enjoyments, but they look upon the union 
of the sexes as a symbol and a representation 
of soul-union. 

[274] 



To such as twit you about your chastity 
say: "Give me an opportunity where I shall 
make neither myself nor others vulgar.' ' 
Outside of the responsible community of life 
there is no such opportunity. Sensualists 
prate a great deal of love, but they do not 
know real love. They who seek sexual pleas- 
ure without the deep responsibility and the re- 
finement of taste are strangers to genuine love 
and its blessedness. They know only that love 
which springs from the lower animal instincts; 
their highest power of love is still unawakened. 
For all real and strong love is inseparable from 
the community of all life-forces, just as all real 
joy is inseparable from a good conscience. 

56. Free Love 

More than the half of those who indulge in 
free relations end with prostitution or suicide. 
The rest are degraded, robbed of the treasure 
of fidelity and of pure motherhood — treas- 
ure inherent in every woman — which is the 
foundation of her character and of her life- 
long happiness. Woe to that man who takes 
such a robbery upon his conscience under 
the pretext: "If I don't, another will." As 

[275] 



^hntaling in ^itrit^ 



though one might climb through an open 
window at night, and burglarize a house, 
because otherwise some one else might do so. 
And who shall pronounce on woman's fate 
in such an offhand way? Often, through a 
kind providence, weak and light-headed girls 
are spared disgrace. Is it not a deep feeling 
and a genuine concern for female weakness 
that underlies man's chivalrous bearing 
towards woman? Whoso has the fate of a 
woman on his conscience ought to cleave to 
her until death, just as the captain has to 
stay with his sinking ship until all others are 
safe. Tolstoi's Resurrection has strikingly 
expressed the requisites of perfect knighthood 
by saying that "not free love, but shackled 
love" belongs to higher culture, love which 
is tied by the firmest cords of fidelity and 
responsibility, and thereby shows that we 
are dealing with a human being and not with 
a roaming animal. 

Only those sing the pleasures of free rela- 
tions who are ignorant of real love. The 
final and lasting impression of all such rela- 
tions is downright prosaic and loathsome, 
and is bound to leave a bitter sting in the 

[276] 



T^lta (at ChaffHig 



souls of all true men. The deep-seated ugli- 
ness of all free relations has its foundation 
precisely in the fact that it lacks the conse- 
cration of true love and esteem. The more 
selfish a relation is, the more prosaic it is; 
genuine poetry is only in true love, which longs 
for eternal union and for everlasting care and 
responsibility. Such love alone blossoms into 
true surrender; all other love is sacrifice and 
not surrender. Contracting marriage is there- 
fore not only a civil and ecclesiastical, but 
also an erotic act, an inseparable expression 
of a deep and genuine love; it is essential to 
the poetry of love that man esteem the woman 
to whom he unites himself, and this springs 
from a deep and true instinct; and, notwith- 
standing all theories, esteem prevails only 
where woman rests on the solid foundation 
which lifts her relations with man from a com- 
munity of enjoyment to a community of life. 

57. Lacordaire's Eloquent Exhortation to 
Youths to Preserve Chastity 

"0 friend, son of thy mother and brother of 
thy sister, son of a mother who brought thee 
forth in the sacred continence of marriage, 

[277] 



^ZhntaUn^ la l^nxitQ 



brother of a sister whose virtue thou admirest 
and enviest, take courage. Do not dishonor 
in thyself the good fortune of having been 
born a man. Be chaste, friend, preserve 
in thy flesh the honor of thy soul, the re- 
ligious mainspring which prompts to every 
healthy movement. Prepare for thy consort 
holy affections, embraces and kisses which 
Heaven and earth may bless. Be chaste to 
live long and to be forever loved. There is 
in the world besides thy mother and thy 
sister, between thy forebears and thy de- 
scendants, another free and sweet creature 
whom God has destined for thee. Hidden 
from thy sight, she fosters in silence the fidel- 
ity she will vow thee. All this time she is 
living for thee whom she does not know. She 
has immolated herself in her struggles, she re- 
bukes herself for whatever might even slightly 
wound thy feelings. Ah! keep thy heart for 
her as she keeps hers for thee. Bring her 
not ruins in exchange for her youth, and as 
she sacrifices herself for thee by anticipated 
love, offer to that love, when passion assails 
thee, a just and bloody sacrifice.' ' — Confer. 
at Notre Dame, Vol. 3 (Poussielge, Paris). 

[278] 



Ratling ^kb&itt 



58. The Nuptial Bliss of the Pure Bridal 
Pair 

The family of young spouses who have pre- 
served their chastity up to their wedding-day 
is the nest of the highest ideals and of the 
sweetest delights. For such a couple, equally 
pure, a new life begins on the same day, and 
neither offers to the other the rancid remnants 
of a life spent in degradation and sin, but 
rather the freshness of a soul and of a body of 
which, up to that time, nothing profane has 
disturbed the innocence. — Confer. Bettazzi. 

59." [Parting Advice . : J 

Keep clear of the strange woman, says the 
Book of Proverbs. Her house inclineth unto 
death, and her paths unto the dead. . . . By 
means of a whorish woman a man is brought 
to a piece of bread. Her house is the way to 
hell, going down to the chambers of death. 

As for any pleasure in this intercourse, 
there is none worth the name. The sense of 
it being a sin, the dread of physical conse- 
quences, and the fear of being found out, 
are so many sharp thorns in the pillows of 

[279] 



^hntalitt^ l& TjpnxilQ 



the fornicator or adulterer. Add the remorse 
which follows the commission of each sep- 
arate act of wickedness, and which more than 
outweighs any pleasure. Whoever would 
taste the pure, permanent, and unalloyed 
delights of woman must seek them not in 
the brothel, nor in any forbidden path, but 
solely in the chaste embraces of wedded love. 
As for him that lacks understanding, she (the 
harlot) saith unto him: Stolen waters are sweet, 
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he 
knoweth not that the dead are there, and that 
her guests are in the depths of hell. By the 
Divine Lawgiver, who is thus grievously of- 
fended, by your own souls and bodies, which 
shall certainly be ruined; by your own fair 
name, which is bound to be tarnished; by your 
very substance, which is sure to be scattered, 
I appeal to you, men, not to sacrifice your 
health and your strength to strange women. 

For marriage, then, we have no safe nor 
legitimate substitute. Till you can enter that 
holy state, you must simply practise self- 
control, and even in wedlock you must be 
careful and moderate. Chastity lies at the 
root of all durable society, and whenever 

[280] 



fittrHng ^kbteict 



and wherever it has departed, society has 
decayed and finally perished from the earth. 
This virtue is the basis of every good man's 
character. To bring the body under, and 
keep it in perfect subjection to a resolute and 
chaste will, is certainly the first duty of every 
one who aspires to anything here or here- 
after. Of course, it is not easy. Self-denial 
and self-watchfulness are never easy, at least 
in the beginning. Many are the pains and 
the penalties in store for you, if you let go 
the reins. Whether you rush into mastur- 
bation or harlotry, you will bitterly rue it. 
If you have let go, pull up and turn back. 
Summon to your aid every good power of 
the world that is and of the world that is 
to be. Get the government over yourselves 
and keep it. While you cannot help feeling 
the flesh stirring within you, you should 
nevertheless keep it in perfect check, till 
such time as, in accordance with the law of 
God and man, you can yield to its cravings. 
This restraint, at first difficult and irksome, 
after a while becomes easy. The appetite 
never indulged lifts its voice only occasion- 
ally and gently. 

[281] 



^btttaling tn ^ttrttg 



Use cold baths, hip baths particularly. 
Sleep alone, with your hands always above 
or about your heads. Keep them strictly 
from other parts of the body. This advice 
is to be rigorously obeyed. Be busy if you 
would be virtuous. Content yourselves with 
plain food. Avoid alcoholic drink and select 
your reading carefully. 

60. Evil Companionships Corrupt Good 
Morals. 1 Cor. xv, 33 

Choose a companion who fosters an am- 
bition to get on and get up physically, 
morally, and socially. Lazy, indolent, unde- 
termined fellows, who do not know what 
they would like to be, who lounge about at 
home or on the streets, all such loafers are 
unfit companions for you. Have nothing to 
do with them. They may not be bad fellows; 
they may even be good and pleasant. Still 
they will do you no good. Stick to those 
with whom you can contend in loving emu- 
lation in the race of life. Associate only 
with healthy people. Sneerers are mentally 
unwell. Never have a companion who is 
guilty of loose talk or indelicate conversa- 

[282] 



farting ^hfaitt 



tion, who is even suspected of immorality and 
of frequenting haunts of vice. Choose relig- 
ious companions. Their influence is almost 
unlimited to form your habits. Wicked asso- 
ciates first laugh at your greenness, then 
excite your imagination, and finally launch 
you on the boundless sea of corruption. 

Why does nature excite in your bosom this 
sighing after union, this all-powerful, irre- 
sistible propensity to love? That this may 
serve as an indissoluble band to unite two 
hearts, to lay the ground for a happy genera- 
tion, and that by this magic tie our exist- 
ence may be connected with the first and the 
most sacred of all duties. Fortunate are 
they who never attempt to pull the fruit till 
they have planted. 

The real strength is the strength to sub- 
due your passions. Overcoming them is a 
title to triumph and a sign of mental forti- 
tude. Chastity is the school in which youths 
ought to be exercised and trained to virile 
manhood. In our days, as in the past, all 
those from whom anything great or glorious 
is or was expected are and were obliged to 
restrain physical love. 

[283] 



%bntattti£ in T^KTilijt 



how beautiful is the chaste generation with 
glory: for the memory thereof is immortal: 
because it is known both with God and with 
men. When it is present, they imitate it: and 
they desire it when it hath withdrawn itself, and 
it triumpheth crowned forever, winning the re- 
ward of undefiled conflicts. Wisdom, iv, 1, 2. 

61. To Check Juvenile and all Other Crimes 
Religious Training is Indispensable 

Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Quintilian, 
Voltaire, Rousseau, Robespierre, Napoleon, 
Guizot, Victor Hugo, Alban Stolz, Herbert 
Spencer, Emile Souvestre, St. John Chrysos- 
tom, Fernand Nicolay, Quetelet, Cousin, F. W. 
Foerster. 

In New York today one hears much re- 
garding outbreaks of juvenile crime. High- 
way robberies, daring holdups, and burglaries 
seem to have a peculiar fascination for vicious 
youngsters, and the dread of a long prison 
sentence appears to exercise little restraining 
effect. If one may credit newspaper reports, 
a like condition of affairs exists in Chicago 
and Boston and other great centers of our 
population. An ex- judge of New York City 

[284] 



y&tltgivns graining 



is reported to have said in a recent interview 
in Baltimore: 

"By far the highest per cent of the crime 
done today in this country is the work of 
youthful malefactors. Mere boys in their 
teens are being haled into the criminal courts 
of our large cities in droves for the perpetra- 
tion of the most desperate offenses against 
society.' ' 

Curiously enough, a common explanation 
of the distressing state of things here alleged, 
now put forward by men and women of prom- 
inence among us, is defective home training. 
These critics prate much of the want of pa- 
rental discipline, asserting that the abandoned 
and reckless boy is, in nine cases out of ten, 
the product of lax control at home. No 
doubt lack of home training is lamentably in 
evidence among us, but is there no other 
reason for this spread of youthful depravity, 
admittedly one of the most serious problems 
facing the modern sociologist? Teachers 
everywhere are opening their eyes to the 
truth that they will not develop men and 
women with abiding characters of moral 
worth and sterling integrity — characters 

[285] 



yZbttcatixtg to ^Juri^g 



that will stand the .storm and Strega of real 

everyday life by any process of veneering 
through the mere influence of mental disci- 
pline and improved material surroundings. 

Moral steadfastness imports a sense of self- 
control and of self-respect; it demands an ap- 
preciation of the beauty of virtue and of the 
nobility of toil; it involves a comprehension 
of man's mission to battle for the right, to 
listen to the voice of duty, and to act accord- 
ing to principle, not because all of thii 
helpful to present success, but because it is a 
sacred obligation of conscience, 

If our boasted school system has failed so 

signally to turn out honest, upright, and in- 
dustrious citizens, as it is commonly claimed 

to have failed, were it not well to abandon 

old fallacies and to recognize the need of explicit 
religious and moral training for our children? 
Thus, and thus only, shall we be able to stem 
the tide of ever-growing depravity com- 
plained of. ] 
The freemason Henry Maret wrote in Le 

Radical: "The so-called neutrality in edu- 
cation is an absurdity; neutrality is impos- 

1 America, Vol. V, No. 5, 

[ 286 ] 



tlinmtts 2f mining 



sible; from the moment a schoolmaster does 
not teach religion, he thereby teaches unbe- 
lief. To pretend that neutrality is all that 
is wanted is hypocrisy in the seventeenth 
degree/' At a session of the lodge Union 
Parfaite at Valenciennes another mason said: 
" Neutrality is a chimera; it is something like 
a square circle, like the philosopher's stone." 
M. Guillot, French government examin- 
ing magistrate, shows in a book based upon 
genuine statistics that the number of youthful 
criminals has quadrupled during the last 
twenty years. From about five thousand 
their number has grown to over twenty-five 
thousand. He comments thereon, saying: 
"All sincere observers must admit that this 
frightful increase of juvenile crime coincides 
with the changes brought about in our pub- 
lic schools. Those responsible for this change 
(from religious to godless education) ought 
to feel very much concerned upon seeing the 
young distinguish themselves by brutal 
depravity." 1 

1 These two last notes are taken from the inspiring work 
Les Grandeurs de la Maternite Chretienne (The Sublimities of 
Christian Motherhood). 

[287] 



^bntatin®, t& ^jJuritg 



Bearing in mind the much emphasized 
axiom, now generally accepted by educators, 
that there is no chastity without religion, we 
eagerly quote the following statements of 
noted authors and philosophers regarding 
the necessity of religious instruction, with a 
view of helping to impress this conviction 
upon all parents and teachers. 

Plato: Not to know the true God is the 
worst of calamities for a State. Whoever 
attacks faith does not love his country, as 
atheism is the ruin of the State. 

Aristotle: It is harder to found a society 
without belief than to build a city in the air. 

Cicero : There is no people so barbarous as 
to believe it can dispense with the idea of God. 

Seneca: Wanted the young to be instructed 
in justice and piety. 

Quintilian: Exacted that teachers be en- 
dowed with the greatest virtues; in fact, with 
holiness. 

Voltaire: God's action in the world is the 
sacred bond of society; it is the first founda- 
tion of a holy equity. 

An atheist people would be a horde of 
bandits. 

[288] 



i^txmm graining 



Rousseau: Without God there can be no 
true probity. 

Cousin: Popular instruction must be re- 
ligious, i.e. j Christian. 

Robespierre: Obliged the Convention to 
declare: The French people believe in the 
existence of a Supreme Being, and in the im- 
mortality of the soul. (June 8, 1794.) 

Napoleon: The Godless man! I saw him 
at work in '93. I know enough of him. 
Man must be imbued with the idea of God. 
Society is impossible without morality. Mo- 
rality implies belief in a creed. 

" Moral and religious education is more 
necessary in free countries than elsewhere; it 
consists chiefly in principles and discipline 
inculcated in the souls from childhood. To 
this effect the' presence and influence of re- 
ligion are indispensable. Religion is inti- 
mately bound to morality, as religion gives to 
morality a sanction and an end reaching be- 
yond this life." — Guizot, Minister of Public 
Instruction, Speech to the Teachers' Associa- 
tion, 1872. 

Guizot: Primary instruction to be useful 
must be profoundly religious. 

[289] 



y&hntaUtt^ ia ^Jltcritg 



Victor Hugo: When France knows how to 
read, don't fail to direct the intellect you 
have unfolded. Let us have ignorance rather 
than bad knowledge. 

The more man grows, the more he must 
believe. I ardently advocate religious in- 
struction, but the religious instruction of 
the Church. (Speech to the Legislative As- 
sembly, January 13, 1850.) 

Alban Stolz: True education which leads 
to man's temporal and eternal welfare is pos- 
sible only when grounded on the teachings, 
principles and institutions of Christianity, 
i.e., the Catholic Church. 

True science and true religion, says Pro- 
fessor Huxley, are twin sisters, and the separa- 
tion of either from the other is sure to prove 
the death of both. Science prospers exactly 
in proportion as it is religious; and religion 
flourishes in exact proportion to the scien- 
tific depth and firmness of its basis. The 
great deeds of philosophers have been less 
the fruit of their intellect than of the direc- 
tion of that intellect by an eminently religious 
tone of mind. 

Herbert Spencer: Though some care is 
[290] 



J 



tli^i®n& ^%tlxx&n% 



taken to fit youth of both sexes for society 
and citizenship, no care is taken whatever to 
fit them for the still morejmportant position 
they will ultimately have to fill — the posi- 
tion of parents. While it is seen that for the 
purpose of gaining a livelihood an elaborate 
preparation is needed, it appears to be thought 
that for the bringing up of children no prep- 
aration whatever is needed. . . . We must 
admit that a knowledge of the right methods 
of juvenile culture, physical, intellectual, and 
moral, is a knowledge second to none in im- 
portance. ... As physical maturity is marked 
by the ability to produce offspring, so mental 
maturity is marked by the ability to train 
those offspring. The subject which involves 
all other subjects, and therefore the subject 
in which the education of every one should 
culminate, is the Theory and Practice of 
Education. 

Emile Souvestre: Whoever wants to give 
a good education to some one else must begin 
by finishing his own. 

St. John Chrysostom : You grudge not the 
time you bestow on breeding cattle and horses. 
Are your children not more precious than they? 

[291] 



^frjtrjtHttig iff l^ntH^ 



Fern and Nicolay: " It is altogether wrong 
to put off religious teaching until the intellect 
is developed, as by that time bad instincts 
have taken root. A few privileged characters 
will acquire a relative morality from daily 
communing with the masterpieces of litera- 
ture, precisely because they are pervaded by 
a religious spirit. To form the hearts of chil- 
dren daily religious instruction is necessary. 
To accomplish this, intellectual training is 
powerless; for, as Herbert Spencer says, 'How 
can spelling, logic, and addition teach respect 
for self and others? ' 

" Thus fortifying teaching is necessary which 
speaks not merely to the intellect, but to the 
feelings, to the will, to the heart; a teaching 
which uplifts, regenerates, and which openly 
dares, without circumlocution or reticence, to 
speak of a, God who rewards and punishes, 
and of a responsible soul. This alone is true 
education. 

"In a book crowned by the French Acad- 
emy, Guerry agrees with several noted writers 
in showing that the most learned districts fur- 
nish most criminals.' ' 

Quetelet, a prominent Belgian academi- 
[292] 



%Ai$i0it& ffyxainin^ 



cian, spent his life in demonstrating that 
mere secular instruction affords greater facil- 
ity for crime. 

Cousin: Religious instruction alone pro- 
motes morality, mere intellectual training 
does not, and may be dangerous. The fore- 
going assertions are facts corroborated by 
prison statistics. 

There is no true morality without religion. 
Secular instruction, far from helping youth, 
is a new cause of decadence, a menace to 
society. Only one-fifth of the suicides and 
one-sixth of the criminals of France are 
women, because a great many girls are still 
taught religion. 

F. W, Foerster: A daily increasing num- 
ber of unbelieving youths acknowledge that 
without firm faith in the eternal truths earnest 
education is out of the question. They who 
faithfully practise mastery of the mind over 
passions and bodily conditions will arrive at 
a new faith in the spiritual world. 

To understand religion, reverence and hu- 
mility for the incomparable greatness of soul 
and knowledge of life which speak from the 
Bible and tradition are indispensable. 

[293] 



^butaling tit f wrtl^g 



After the struggles and sufferings insep- 
arable from human nature, and after ex- 
periencing the mysterious power of higher 
aspirations in those moments of deep and 
clear insight, of self-introspection and self- 
knowledge, a fact which imposes upon all 
men is the greatness and the indispensability 
of religion. Hence, what a fatal blunder 
to attempt to replace these liberating truths 
by vain abstractions! 

"The lay (i.e. godless) schools are a menace 
to society." — Prof. G. Toniolo of the Uni- 
versity of Pisa. 

62. Prominent Non-Catholic Witnesses 

Bishop Johnston, Fred Woodrow, Rev. Dr. 
David Wylie, Amasa Thornton, President 
Hyde, Dr. L. Seeley, Dr. W. Radcliffe, Rev. 
Dr. E. T. Wolf, Rev. W. Montague Geer, Rev. 
Dr. David H. Greer, etc. 

We eagerly quote the following from an 
editorial in the June issue of The Ladies' 
Home Journal: 

"To say that the desire for education has 
become an obsession in America is not stat- 

[294] 



tligtffus t^xainitt^ 



ing the case too strongly. And, as in the 
case of all good desires that get away from 
their true anchorage, it is, indeed, a question 
whether we have not got away from the cor- 
rect angle in this whole matter. Are we not 
confusing the word education as meaning 
something that comes entirely out of and 
from books, instead of a drawing out and an 
unfolding of all those powers of head, heart, 
and body that will best help not only to 
develop the understanding, but also to train 
the temper, cultivate taste, and form good 
habits and good manners? 

"If," it continues, "we are educating the 
head either at the expense of the heart, or 
without due regard for the relation of the 
heart, the sooner we know it the better, and 
the sooner we stop it the better. We are 
already cutting a sorry enough figure before the 
nations of the world as being the one nation 
which has the only great school system without 
a vestige of a definite and formal instruction in 
regard to religion in it." 

It will not be long before the dissatisfac- 
tion will make itself heard in no uncertain 
tone; and when the dissatisfaction takes 

[295] 



^hntating hi |k**ifcg 



form and reaches expression we shall be mis- 
taken if it be not a definite pronouncement 
against the growing tendency of the almost 
entirely scientific character of our educa- 
tional curriculum, and the gradual disap- 
pearance of the distinctly and avowedly 
moral and ethical element. 



It is, unfortunately, the undeniable and 
melancholy fact that crime is increasing with 
the increase of popular education, not alone 
in the number of crimes, but in the hein- 
ousness of their character, and it is this 
which has begun to open the eyes of the 
fathers and mothers of the land to the defect 
inherent in the education given to their 
children. 

We cordially agree with the position 
assumed by the Home Journal writer: "The 
time has come when every parent must begin 
to think seriously of how his or her child is 
being educated, and then decide whether the 
standards are right or wrong. And we fear 
that the decision will be that they are wrong." 

Morality as applied to the routine of ordi- 
[296] 






Aigimts; ^taintti0 



nary every-day life, let the theorists say what 
they may, cannot be taught without the essen- 
tial reference to religious principles, and the 
astounding fact was proclaimed some years 
ago that more than fifty per cent, of all the chil- 
dren of our country receive no religious instruc- 
tion whatever. A writer in the Educational 
Review of February, 1898, quoting statistics, 
contended that less than fifty per cent, of the 
young people of the United States frequent the 
Sunday schools, and apart from the religious 
instruction there imparted, such as it is, what 
opportunity comes to them to receive the treas- 
ures of the one necessary wisdom into their 
hearts and minds? .... 

The awakening which the Home Journal 
writer speaks of is proof enough that many non- 
Catholics are thoroughly in accord with the 
Methodist Protestant who, in a signed letter 
to the Literary Digest (Vol. VII, No. 7), 
affirms: "In our judgment the denominational 
schools of the land, as compared with the purely 
secular or State schools, are, on moral grounds, 
incomparably safer. Our State institutions, as 
a general thing, are the hotbeds of infidelity, 
not less than vice. That unbelief should be 

[297] 



^E&ntatittg tit fbtrtig 



fostered and fomented there is not unnatural 
We thoroughly believe that our church should 
invest ten millions of dollars in the next 
ten years in denominational schools. Why? 
Because we believe this system is American 
and the only safe one" America, Vol. V, 
No. 25. 

The Rev. David G. Wylie, D.D., pastor 
of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, 96th 
and Central Park West, New York, in the 
course of his lecture to the Presbyterian 
Ministers' Association in Witherspoon Hall, 
Philadelphia, about fifteen years ago, on "The 
Services of the Roman Catholic Church to 
American Civilization/' said: "In the mat- 
ter of religion and education, the Church of 
Rome renders service to the American State 
because it insists on the necessity of religion 
in connection with education, and believes 
any system to be radically defective which 
omits religious teaching. Agnostic, skeptical, 
and godless education is a menace to our 
civilization which Protestants ought fully to 
recognize." 

From the North American Review, Janu- 
ary, 1898: 

[298] 



0ti$t&n& graining 



"I am a Protestant of the firmest kind. . . . 
The Catholic Church has insisted that it 
is its duty to educate its children in such 
a way as to fix religious truths in the youth- 
ful mind. For this it has been assailed by 
the non-Catholic population, and Catholics 
have even been charged with being enemies 
of the people and of the flag. Any careful 
observer in the city of New York can see 
that the only people, as a class, who are 
teaching the children in the way that will 
secure the future of the best civilization are 
the Catholics; and, although a Protestant of 
the firmest kind, I believe the time has come 
to recognize this fact, and for us to lay 
aside prejudices and patriotically meet this 
question. The children and youth of today 
must be given such instruction in the truth 
of the Bible and Christian precepts as will 
prevent them in mature years from swinging 
from their moorings and being swept into 
the maelstrom of social and religious deprav- 
ity which threatens to engulf the religion 
of the future. Such instruction can only 
be given successfully by an almost entire 
change of policy and practice on the ques- 

[299] 



JHhutaiinQ h» l^nxitn 






tion of religious teaching in the public schools, 
and the encouragement of private schools 
in which sound religious teaching is given." 
— Hon. Amasa Thornton, New York. 

Bishop Johnston (Episcopal) of Western 
Texas: 

" Gladstone said that a man educated intel- 
lectually but not morally may become more 
dangerous than before; and that is precisely 
the case with the colored people. In the pub- 
lic schools they receive no moral instruction, 
and while their wits are being sharpened 
there is scarcely any moral strengthening. 
This inability of the public schools of our 
land to teach any system of morals is going 
to lead, within a few years, to a struggle 
the like of which this country has never seen, 
and it will be with a generation that believes 
nothing at all." — Sermon preached in New 
York, June 10, 1901. 

From the Age of Steel, October, 1904: 

"A boy may be kept at school for several 
years, . . . but if his heart is not educated 
with his head, his conscience with his mem- 
ory, skill in penmanship, and knowledge of 
arithmetic, of the date of the battle of 

[300] 



^tttgimt* ^xainitt^ 



Bunker Hill, and the number of gallons of 
water in Lake Michigan are no guaranty- 
that he will not use his acquired knowledge 
in putting the finishing touches to as con- 
summate a scoundrel as ever entered a prison 
cell. So far as education goes, there are 
rascals who understand geometry, and can 
give you the distance of the sun, moon, and 
stars as easily as a railway conductor can 
punch a mileage book." — Fred Woodrow. 

President Hyde, of Bowdoin College, 
before the Massachusetts Teachers' Associ- 
ation of Boston, November, 1904: 

"The public school must do more than it 
has been doing if it is to be a real educator 
of youth and an effective supporter of the 
State. It puts the pen of knowledge in the 
child's hand, but fails to open the treasures 
of wisdom to his heart and mind. Of what 
use is it to teach a child how to read, if he 
cares to read nothing but the sensational 
accounts of crime? These people who know 
how to read and write and cipher, and know 
little else — these are the people who furnish 
fuel for A. P. A. fanaticism, who substitute 
theosophy for religion, passion for morality, 

[301] 



^hntaUng in ^?jst?t|| 



impulse for reason, crazes and caprice for 
conscience and the Constitution. " 

From the Educational Review, February, 
1898: 

"A little less than fifty per cent, of all the 
children of our country frequent any Sunday 
school. The meaning of these figures is 
simply overwhelming. More than one-half 
of the children of this land now receive no 
religious education. . . . Even this feature 
does not show all the truth. It seems to 
admit that those who attend Sunday school 
are receiving proper religious instruction; 
but every one knows this cannot be granted." 
— Dr. Levi Seeley, of the State Normal 
School, Trenton, N.J. 

Dr. Wallace Radcliffe (Presbyterian): 

" In our church life we recognize the Trinity: 
home, school, and church, a triple cord not 
easily broken. The home is a school, the 
school is a home. It is an unintelligible 
Christianity which loses sight of this impor- 
tant factor (the school) in our church. . . . 
It is something that your children go to 
school; it is more that they go to a school 
of your own religious belief. Therefore, we 

[302] 



tligitntm graining 



summon you to bring up your children in 
your own faith. Let us establish schools 
. . . and teach our religious convictions/' — 
Washington, D.C., October 7, 1900. 

Rev. Dr. E. T. Wolf, Professor of Gettys- 
burg Theological Seminary, before the Evan- 
gelical Alliance: 

" Moral training has for the most part been 
cast out of our public schools. Every fac- 
ulty, except the highest and noblest, is exer- 
cised and invigorated; but the crowning 
faculty — that which is designed to animate 
and govern all others — is contemptuously 
ignored; and, unless its education can be 
secured, our young men and women will be 
graduated from our schools as moral imbe- 
ciles. This country is facing a grave social 
problem. " — The Philadelphia Press, Decem- 
ber 4, 1901. 

Rev. W. Montague Geer (Episcopalian), 
before the Sons of the Revolution, in New 
York City, just after the death of President 
McKinley: 

"This dreadful calamity looks very much 
like a visitation on us of the wrath of the 
Most High, We must get back to the guid- 

[303] 



^btttaUng I0 TfintilQ 



ing principles of our forefathers. There were 
two evils in our great country: first, the sin 
of slavery — that we have expiated and 
wiped out; then the sin of intemperance — 
that we can master, and are mastering. . . . 
Is there, then, any evil still in the land so 
widespread as to call down the wrath of God 
upon us? There is. Our godless system of 
education is a far worse crime than slavery 
or intemperance. / believe that the United 
States is suffering from the wrath of God today 
because our people have consented to the ban- 
ishment of Jesus Christ from the daily lives of 
our children. If today Christ were on earth 
and should enter almost any public school- 
house in the country, the teacher, acting 
under instruction, would show Him the door. 
If, on the other hand, He were to enter any 
of our private (parochial) schools, He would 
be worshiped by teacher and scholars on 
bended knee. Here is our fault, here is our 
sin. The question now is: To what extent 
can we remold and remodel our educational 
system? Almost any system is better than 
the present one. It would be infinitely better 
to divide up the money received from the 

[304] 



tligwnm f^xmnim 



school tax among the various Christian de- 
nominations and the Hebrews than to continue 
the present irreligious system.' ' — St. Paul's 
Church, New York City, September, 1901. 

Rev. Dr. David H. Greer (Episcopal), 
before the General Episcopal Convention: 

" Education needs something more than 
mental training and culture to make men 
pure and keep them so. It needs that cul- 
ture and training be inspired by religion. 
The Episcopal Church is not satisfied with 
the present system of public schools, because 
religion is not taught in them. These schools 
should not only turn out well-equipped young 
men and women, but Christians as well." — 
Washington, D.C., October 22, 1898. 

The same Episcopal Convention decreed: 

"That the bishops and clergy remind the 
people of their duty to support and build 
up our own schools and colleges, and to make 
education under the auspices of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church superior in all respects 
to that afforded in other institutions." 

From the New York Times: 

"The movement of the Roman Catholics 
to secure a system of education which shall 

[305] 



%hutatintt, \» T^uxity 



not ignore religion is the movement in the 
right direction. Their self-sacrificing effort 
in maintaining their parochial schools for this 
purpose ought to cause us Protestants to blush 
when it is compared with our own indiffer- 
ence in this matter. The religious training of 
Protestant children is left almost entirely to 
the Sunday school, where the great bulk of 
the teachers are so inefficient and indiffer- 
ent that they exert no moral influence over 
their charges. The bitterness which has ex- 
isted between Protestants and Romanists 
has become so much a matter of the past 
that it ought to be possible to agree upon 
some plan whereby our youth can receive 
some kind of religious training in the public 
schools. Surely every Christian will rejoice 
to have such religion given, so that our chil- 
dren will not grow up wholly irreligious and 
thus become a menace to the well-being of 
society." — A Protestant, March 1, 1900. 

From the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Eagle, June 1, 
1902: 

" Right and wrong in the affairs of con- 
duct are not matters of instinct; they have to 
be learned just as really, in fact, as history 

[306] 



ti%$t®nm graining 



or handicrafts. Is this knowledge being im- 
parted to our children in any efficient way 
and by any efficient teachers? Is the public 
school doing it? Is the church doing it? Are 
fathers and mothers doing it? We are com- 
pelled to say No to all these queries. . . . 
The truth is, we are taking for granted a moral 
intelligence which does not exist. We are 
leaning upon it, depending upon it, trusting to 
it, and it is not there. 

"Our whole machinery of education from 
the kindergarten up to the university is 
perilously weak at this point. We have 
multitudes of youths and grown men and women 
who have no more intelligent sense of what is 
right and wrong than had so many Greeks of 
the time of Alcibiades. . . . The great Ro- 
man Catholic Church ... is unquestionably 
right in the contention that the whole system 
as it now exists is morally a negation. . . . 

"The great company of educators and the 
whole American community need to be 
sternly warned that if morality cannot be 
specifically taught in the public schools with- 
out admitting religious dogma, then religious 
dogma may have to be taught in them. 

[307] 



For righteousness is essential to a people's 
very existence. And righteousness does not 
come by nature any more than reading or 
writing does. . . . We are within measurable 
distance of the time when society may for 
its own sake go on its knees to any factor 
which can be warranted to make educa- 
tion compatible with and inseparable from 
morality, letting that factor do it on its own 
terms and teach therewith whatsoever it 
lists.^ 

" The superintendent of the public schools in 
San Bernardino, California, has appealed to 
parents to aid him in stamping out a plague 
of ' puppy love/ as he calls it, that is spread- 
ing among the boys and girls who attend the 
mixed classes of the schools of that town. 
So absorbed have the children become in 
playing the roles of Romeo and Juliet that 
the spirit of study has evaporated, and all 
mental vigor is relaxed, discipline has been 
weakened, and, what is particularly signifi- 
cant, several elopements have occurred among 
the pupils.' ' l 

1 America, Vol. VII, No. 5. 
[308] 




Note to the Third Edition 5 

Translator's Preface 6 

Important Foreword 10 

I. Essentials 13 

Wrong and Right Enlightenment; the Latter is 
Absolutely Necessary. — Chief Requirements to 
Properly Impart It: The Fit Words and the 
Right Spirit. — Causes of Wrong Ideas Con- 
cerning Sex Matters: Impure Intention: Im- 
prudent Silence of the Natural Guardians. — 
Misconceived Modesty. 

II. The Meaning of Purity 21 

Impurity; Hotbed of Vice. — Serious Duty of 
Educators. 

III. Dangers and Their Baneful Effects on Purity 25 

1. Perils; Interior; Outward. — Accidental Allure- 
ments. — Perversion. — Obscene Literature. — 
A Senseless Englightenment Craze. — Opinions 
of Foerster and of Paulsen. 

2. Disastrous Effects. — Notwithstanding the 
Evil, no General Conclusions may be Drawn, 

and the Fight must be Kept Up 31 

IV. Safeguarding Purity. Exterior Guardians and 

Protectors of Purity 35 

[309] 



*$nhtx 



The Principal Safeguard: Frequent Communion. 
Invisible Protectors: God; the Blessed Virgin; 
Guardian Angels; Saints. — Sodalities. — Par- 
ents and Other Educators and Their Duties. — 
Heredity. — Watchfulness; Wisely Strict 
Method of Education. — Puberty. — Right. — 
General Education. — Training to Self-mastery. 

V. Safeguard op Purity. The Best Interior 

Guardian: the Well-Trained Conscience. 46 

1. Conscientiousness (what is the Rightly trained 
Conscience). — Conscientiousness more than 
Mere Knowledge. — Lack of Conscientiousness 
Regarding Purity. — It must be Aroused and 
Trained even in the Little Ones. 

2. Means to Train the Conscience. — Enlighten- 
ing and Motives. — To Instruct Properly is the 
Main Thing. — A Believing Teacher will Find it 
Easy to Assign Motives. — The Most Impor- 
tant Supernatural Motives. — Useful Books. . 49 

3. Enlightening 53 

(A) Necessity: Instructing in this Matter is Just 
as Necessary as in Other Moral Precepts. — 
Why it is often Neglected; Through Fear of the 
Trouble and Through False Sentiment, as if 
Everything Sexual were Sinful. — Sad Conse- 
quences of this Neglect. — Opinions of Hirscher 
and Stolz. 

(B) General Remarks on the Way of Imparting 
this Instruction. — The Habit of Receiving 
Instruction should be Formed before School 
Age. — Because of the Grossly Erroneous No- 
tions Regarding Class-Teaching of this Matter, 
We shall Treat this First; Next We shall Descant 

on Private Individual Instruction 58 

.[310] 



4. Class-Teaching of the Younger School Children. 60 

(A) Remarks. — Explain Simply Modesty and 
Immodesty; not Purity and Impurity. 

(B) How to Give this Instruction. — What is 
Immodesty? — The Wickedness of this Sin; It 
must not be Exaggerated. — Observations. — 
Directions Concerning Confession and other 
Individual Instructions. 

5. Class-Teaching of the Older School Children: 
The Explanations are Essentially the Same as in 
the Lower Grades. — Importance of Confession. 

— Greater Stress is Laid on the Motives. — 
Pitfalls and Safeguards. — Difference of the 
Sexes. — What is to be Said and to be Done 
anent this. — What is to be Avoided in the 
Class-Instruction 69 

6. Class-Instruction on Marriage to Children Who 
are about to Leave School. — Necessity of 
this Teaching. — Mere Physiological Teaching 
must be Avoided. — Progressive Knowledge Ac- 
cording to Advancing Age. — Carefulness. — - 
Outlines of Instructions to Older Pupils. . . 79 

7. Private Instruction 99 

(A) General Rules: Object. — Method. — Moral 
Importance. — Comparisons from the Vegetable 
and Animal Kingdoms must not be Pushed Far. 

— Training of the Mind; Individual Consider- 
ations. 

To Impart this Instruction is First the Parents' 
Duty, and Next that of Other Educators. 

(B) Individual Teaching. — Younger Children. — 

[311] 



^nhtx 



VI. 



Those Who have Reached Puberty. — Outlines of 
More Complete Instructions for this Age. . 106 

8. Important Final Remarks on this Teaching. . 130 

How to Cure Those Addicted to Impurity . 133 
How can the Vice be Detected. — What Remedies 
are to be Adopted. — Relapses. — Conclusion. 




[312] 




*$tthtx iff ^fftnhix 



1. Introduction. — Aim. — Sources .... 142 

2. Drop the Stork Story. — The Truth : We are 

God's the Basis of Self-Respect. — The 
Opposite not a Fable but a Lie. — Held 
as Such by the Foremost Educators. — 
Fables and Fairy Tales generally Detri- 
mental. — This Deception most Harmful. 

— Ways to impart the Truth and its 
Salutary Results ........ 146 

3. Children's Curiosity regarding Sexual Things. 

— Promiscuous Bathing of Children under 
Five a Damper 158 

4. Strengthening the Will. — Necessity of Prac- 

tising Little Self-denials, of curbing Whims 
and Cravings for Things Indifferent, to suc- 
ceed in subduing Sinful Inclinations, and in 
building Character. — The Way to do so. 161 

5. Joy of Self -Conquest and Persevering Labor. 166 

[313] 



6. Character building based on Christ's prin- 

' ciples " Deny thyself, Curb thyself." — 
Company-keeping grand opportunity to 
upbuild Character. — Certain Restrictions 
necessary and demanded by true Love . 168 

7. Advantages of Chastity 171 

8. Preservatives and Cure 174 

9. Crusade against Immorality in Italy and 

France, etc., Books on Purity .... 178 

10. Sexual Instruction Urged by Dr. Denslow 

Lewis, quotes Dr. Prince Morrow and Dr. 

S. A. Knopf 180 

11. Coventry Patmore on Prudery . . . . 184 

12. Timely Forewarning, etc. How Girls are 

Initiated 185 

13. Dangers to Chastity of Girls — of the Young 

of both Sexes 186 

14. Extravagance in Dressing. — Children's Par- 

ties 188 

15. The Nude. — Its Debasing Tendency . . 189 

16. Blunder of sending Children to Bed as Pun- 

ishment. — Busy them with Various Use- 
ful Exercises 190 

17. Dangers of Co-education. — Separating the 

Sexes 191 

18. Violent and Nerve-straining Exercise in- 

jurious to Maidens 198 

[314] 



^nhtx 



19. Evils of Mental Pollution and Flirtation. — 

Moral Onanism. — Girls' Pitfalls. — How 
they forfeit their Reputation. — How they 
Fall. — Balls. — Theaters. — Newspapers 
(Bishop Spalding on) 202 

20. Necessity of a Crusade against Alcoholism 

and Venereal Diseases 205 

21. Prevalence of Gonorrhea, Syphilis, eighty 

per cent of the Men. — Tuberculosis and 
Insanity 206 

22. These three Diseases most frequently spring 

from Intemperance 207 

23. Venereal Diseases cause Blindness, Sterility, 

Idiocy, Insanity, Female Troubles, Nerv- 
ous Diseases 207 

24. Dr. Gruber on Syphilis, its Nature, its 

Symptoms. — Frightfully contagious and 
hereditary. — How it spreads. — Offspring 
stillborn or doomed 210 

25. Gonorrhea too springs from Lechery. — Symp- 

toms. — Ruinous to Women and Babes . 212 

26. Syphilitic Symptoms and Dangers of Oral 

Infection described by Dr. C. M. Whitney. 214 

27. Heredity and Hereditary Disease dramatic- 

ally portrayed by a French Academician . 215 

28. The Nation's Shame: How rife Venereal 

Diseases are in the United States Army . 226 
[315] 



3tt& 



tx 



29. Most Prostitutes Syphilitic 230 

30. The Social Evil. — Crusade against it by- 

Social Purity Congress. — St. Thomas 
Aquinas on Debauchery 230 

31. Why Brothels should not be Tolerated. — 

Temptation to Young and Old; main 
cause of Venereal Diseases 231 

32. Medical Supervision inadequate to stop In- 

fection 233 

33. Harlotry's Ravages. — Bishop Spalding on 

Lechery 234 

34. The Right Attitude towards Prostitutes. — 

Frequenting them is plunging them further 
down. — Restraining Effect of good Ex- 
ample 236 

35. Remorse and Grief consequent on Sin. — 

Tolstoi. — Bishop Spalding .... 238 

36. Preventing Prostitution. — More Charity. 

— More Homes. — Paying Living Wages 

is genuine Philanthropy 239 

37. Injustice of the Double Standard . . . 241 

38. Restraining Thoughts 243 

39. Fear of Infection is but auxiliary to Re- 

ligious Restraint 244 

40. The Son curbed and cheered by the Thought: 

My Father lives on in Me 246 

41. Reciprocal Influence of Mind and Body . 247 

[316] 



^ttbtx 



42. Uplifting effects of Ideals and of Conti- 

nence 248 

43. Purity sustains and promotes the Health 

of the Soul 250 

44. Practical Religion helpful to Chastity . . 251 

45. Courtship rules. — Dangers Attendant on 

Company-keeping. — The Priceless Jewel . 253 

46. Examples of Modesty 255 

47. Woman's Salutary Influence on Man . . 256 

48. Sinful Courting. — Undue Privileges . . 257 

49. Consequences of Early Illegitimate Sexual 

Commerce. — Its Debasing Effects . . 258 

50. Sensuality ruinous to Youth 259 

51. Self -abuse. — Symptoms. — How Injurious 

to Lads and Lasses. — Dreadful Conse- 
quences 262 

52. How Self-abuse may be Guarded against 

and Cured. — Firm Resolution strength- 
ened by Prayer and the Sacraments — 
St. Philip Neri's Case. — Devotion to the 
Blessed Virgin. See p. 133 .... 267 

53. Early Marriages 271 

54. The Supreme Remedy. — Catholic Parents' 

Duty 273 

55. Purity Ennobles. — Immorality Debases. — 

True Love is Chaste Sacramental Love . 274 

56. Free-love Indulgence Immoral and Ugly. — 

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Shackled Love is the only true Love 

which becomes and fosters human Dignity . 275 

57. Lacordaire's Appeal to Youths for Chastity. 277 

58. Nuptial Bliss of the Pure 279 

59. Parting Advice to Youths, Men and Women. 

— No Substitute for Marriage .... 279 

60. Evil Companionships corrupt good Morals . 282 

61. To check juvenile and other Crime Relig- 

ious Training is Indispensable .... 284 

62. Prominent Non-Catholic Witnesses . . . 294 




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